We've come to wish you an unhappy birthday: Microsoft to yank services from Internet Explorer, kill off Legacy Edge by 2021 The clock is ticking. Microsoft has warned customers its services won't be supported on the veteran browser within the year. To be fair to the Windows giant, it has been making determined efforts to kill off the former leading browser for some time now, telling customers it was merely a compatibility solution before sticking …
Except the easiest way to get a better browser is to download it with your existing browser so it still has a function.
i just installed a new XP VM (don't ask), I think it came with IE3. Ok need to have a modern one so over to Vivaldi.com - wouldn't load. Indeed anything with a forced https:// URL wouldn't load. Eventually found a browser site that would serve plain http:// and downloaded that. That in turn could download a browser of my choice - well Chrome anyway!
I presume IE3's SSL/TLS handling is of a bygone world or its certificate store has expired.
IE6 was the default in XP when it was released. IE in XP suffers from the fact that XP does not support TLSv1.1 or higher (other browsers do not use the same SSL engine) and as TLSv1 and lower have been deprecated for some time it's no surprise that IE in XP could not connect to a reasonably secure website. It doesn't matter which version of IE you upgraded to in XP it would have suffered the same problem.
Honestly Microsoft really don't do themselves any favours the way they do things.
There's a load of old, obsolete or genuinely poorly designed technologies that Microsoft should have given the Old Yeller treatment long ago - not just IE, but Silverlight, UWP, WPF, ActiveX, etc - yet they somehow stay shuffling around like zombies. I really don't understand it.
Microsoft's entire legacy is based on the precept that everything that used to work will continue working in some fashion.
You can still install apps from the Visual Basic 4 days and they'll "just work".
That's not even true of binaries on other operating systems - you can't necessarily run an old glibc5 binary on a newer Linux at all... let alone expect it to integrate with the system integrations in place nowadays.
The second Microsoft make an OS without backwards compatibility, people forgo it and it becomes niche. Windows CE, Wnidows Mobile, those Windows Starter devices that only do Metro apps, etc.
The problem behind it is not that Microsoft allow it... it's that NOBODY sees that you need to update software even if it's "working". People would rather run-as-admin, give full security, override UAC, use a broken browser, etc. than actually update their software to be using tech from the correct decade.
What's broken is the software development model - where it's a vast, vast, vast, vast effort to update a program that's tied into that tech to use newer tech that secure, and far outside the reach of even businesses that paid millions for the app in the first place. The only way to support an IE ActiveX binary is to run IE. The only way to run a Silverlight program is to install Silverlight. The only way to run a .NET Framework 3.5 program is to install .NET Framework 3.5 (even if your machine had newer versions).
"People would rather run-as-admin, give full security, override UAC, use a broken browser, etc. than actually update their software to be using tech from the correct decade."
Yes of course, people aren't stupid. Software from "correct decade" is bug-ridden piece of s**t with brain-damaged "flat" UI and it reports everything it can find about you, your friends or anyone or anything to mothership: Full fleged spyware slinging ads every 10 seconds. Like Edge literally does.
Why the f**k would *anyone* *downgrade* their working piece to new piece of s**it? Tell us?
Any rational reason is valid, but "security" isn't one of them, on Windows. When OS is full of holes "upgrading", i.e. fu**ing with working system, isn't a reason at all.
I do agree on software development model, it has been totally broken since DOS 1.0.
The second Microsoft make an OS without backwards compatibility, people forgo it and it becomes niche. Windows CE, Wnidows Mobile, those Windows Starter devices that only do Metro apps, etc.
I still think the way for MS to rid themselves of the legacy code in the system core would be to dump all the code they want to be rid of into Wine (or a variant if they're really stubborn) and just have the system run legacy code in a Wine or Wine-like runtime. Would allow them to pull the old pieces out of system core. Of course I *would* prefer it was the Wine project they pushed the old code into.
As someone who has to support business apps in the SMB world, there are some truly dreadful examples companies keep using. Some have the excuse that they are old (even dead) but customers still need them to access some old data. Often it is for regulatory reasons that they need access to legacy data and due to the (possibly now non existent) vendor rolling their own database there is no easy way to port it to something newer.
Others have no excuse as they are still current, but just written very badly. Vendors always come up with nonsense like "just make everyone an administrator" or "access the database using sa". Of course what we actually do is setup proper SQL logons and dig out Procmon to see what file/registry location is being accessed and put in the relevant permissions.
Backwards compatibility will be here for a while.
not just IE, but Silverlight, UWP, WPF, ActiveX, etc - yet they somehow stay shuffling around like zombies. I really don't understand it.
They need it for enterprise software. When they say enterprise software they mean badly-written stuff perched on top of these "technologies" which is never ever, ever, updated. MS would be happy to unceremoniously get shot of them all because it must be getting difficult to hire people who know their way around them, but if they ever did that then the barrier to other OSes would be lower.
>They need it for enterprise software. When they say enterprise software they mean badly-written stuff perched on top of these "technologies" which is never ever, ever, updated.
This also includes the industrial sector where there are lots of big machines being run by crusty old software dependent on those ancient underpinnings, and can't be upgraded either because too much money would be lost by shutting down for the time needed to upgrade, or because the machine was designed to work only with that very specific configuration for proprietary reasons.
I just don't understand why anyone, ever, would use a web browser from an advertising company.
From the vendor of your OS? yes. From an independent open source foundation? yes. From an ISV with features you are willing to pay for? yes.
FROM AN A-D-V-E-R-T-I-S-I-N-G COMPANY ?!?!?!?
NO.
This is the sort of behaviour that I expect of unfathomable business types, or fasionistas, not developers or sysadmins.
I guess I'm clearly now officially old and out of touch, a luddite even.
One of the great things about not using much Microsoft software is that when they go on their random campaigns to deliver useless platform x or kill off a badly implemented application y, then I don't have to worry about any of this and I can get on quite contently with my life..
This seems to be symptomatic of the culture through the whole of their company for all things they develop that results in such rubbish software that has to be constantly killed off.
I guess this explains why we have such an odd operating system with Windows 10 and all its well known poor design.(start menui, several control panel things, unstable things, things constantly breaking during updates etc).
Given what we can see on the outside, you have to wonder how bad it is on the inside.
The only positive I can bring from all of this is that its not my problem, but its nice to stand here eating popcorn and watching the show.
How can you ignore Google, they have 50% of worlds advertising bugets, 95% of the browser market and 90% of the phone OS market.
Microsoft are an inconsequential Data Center opporator by comparission that has a side line in Desktop OSes, whose installed base is being shrunk by said advertiser and other companies that have better creamed off large percentages of other people's (app developers and retail companies) hard earned money.
Really?
I mean, if we're talking about IE6 - then hated is perfectly fine. But IE11 is more unloved I think - if not actually ignored. Actually I used IE11 for a bit - when Firefox had become unbearably crashy for 6 months - before they fixed it a few years ago. I'd not particularly liked Opera when I'd tried it, and using Chrome is just silly given who makes it. Anyway I like proper menus rather than shoving all the options into just one massive, unweildy horrible to use one. And so I rejected Edge for the same reason.
I'm still a happy Firefox user, with a convenient menus - despite my brief unfaithfulness. IE11 was OK I suppose. As are Edge and Chrome and no doubt many others.
In early 2000, an OS update, caused by a hardware update (y'all know the drill) finally killed off support for IBM 1401 emulation on a System/360 descendant. The emulator was introduced in the mid 1960s to ease software migration, and the last IBM 1401 rolled off the assembly line in 1974 (IIRC). So, 25 years of IE is not exactly a match for 35 years of 1401 emulation, but not bad for these days when "What kind of loser expects software over 3 years old to work?"
For once, a sensible move by Microsoft. Businesses need to get their heads out of their asses, get their chequebook out, and migrate applications still bodged for early versions of IE onto platforms worthy of the name. Hell I can still think of stuff dependent on IE6 in circulation in some places.
Of course, if they also wake up to the 25 years of being had by charlatans that create-and-break standards repeatedly in order to shift more product, business leaders might also recognise that certain standards are more reliable and long-term supported than others...
... seeing as many of us killed off Explorer over two decades ago.
And once bitten, twice shy, that same many never installed Edge in the first place.
What's that? You have a third browser, also called Edge? Why on Earth would anyone with more than a handful of working brain cells expect your third attempt to work any better than the first two abject failures?
Thanks for the info, but no thanks for the code. Come back after nuking your entire code-base and starting from scratch. Then, maybe, we'll talk. But I doubt it.
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