back to article Microsoft to let Internet Explorer 11 haunt Windows some more

Microsoft ended support for Internet Explorer 11 (IE11) as a desktop application on Windows 10 back on June 15, 2022, and permanently disabled its legacy browser on certain versions of Windows 10 on February 14. That really ought to have been the end of it. Alas, who could have foreseen that Microsoft's browser prophecy – "the …

  1. sarusa Silver badge
    FAIL

    Still a lot of ancient industrial hardware that needs it

    There is still a lot of old industrial equipment out there that needs IE for control, because its control software was specifically coded for IE's defects. And since the hardware is no longer sold they haven't updated the control software and want you to just replace your entire cooling system so you can have new control software. Manufacturers like Eaton, but they're hardly the only ones.

    I know a guy whose coolers and radars all broke with the early May Windows 10 update. They need a specific ancient version of Java (JRE-6u35) running an applet on actual Internet Explorer. No Chrome, no Firefox, no Edge. They also need Flash for some other stuff (lawl). He had over SIXTY of these pieces of old but functional kit that were no longer working. Money to replace them all is... not in his budget.

    So what I did for him is make a 32-bit Windows 7 VM with that version of Java and the last working version of Flash (32.0.0.371). The image is 'only' 3.5GB. They run it on VirtualBox on their Windows 10 machines. VirtualBox allows you to pass through things like USB devices and COM ports. I was a little worried, but they say it works. And since MS doesn't update Win7 any more, it won't break randomly.

    Anyhow, as long as this old stuff is out there and running and needs IE, IE will shamble on. It's the ultimate outcome of MS making IE deliberately non-standards conforming so they could dominate the browser market, and companies then making things that only run on IE. They deliberately created this situation, now they can deal with it (badly).

    1. Usermane

      Re: Still a lot of ancient industrial hardware that needs it

      The same with the apps that run only on windows until the next upgrade

    2. ecofeco Silver badge

      Re: Still a lot of ancient industrial hardware that needs it

      You talk like Frontpage wasn't a superior format!

      /s in case it's needed

      Fuck Frontpage and IIS, just to make it even more clear.

    3. J. R. Hartley

      Re: Still a lot of ancient industrial hardware that needs it

      "And since MS doesn't update Win7 any more, it won't break randomly."

      Shirley you don't let it ever see the internet?!

      1. Trigun

        Re: Still a lot of ancient industrial hardware that needs it

        Indeed! I'd want to try and get that VM and those coolers on their own VLAN and completely away from the interwebs.

    4. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Tewnty years on, same tune, different words....

      Anyhow, as long as this old stuff is out there and running and needs IEChrome, IEChrome will shamble on. It's the ultimate outcome of MSGoogle making IEChrome deliberately non-standards conformingforce-use-of-only-bleeding-edge-crap so they could dominate the browser market, and companies then making things that only run on IEChrome. They deliberately created this situation, now they can deal with it (badly).

      I wish I were only joking. :(

    5. georgeBlot

      Re: Still a lot of ancient industrial hardware that needs it

      Forgive my ignorance - or, delete where applicable, my naivety - but does this mean that MS lied when they said that anything that worked in IE11 would work in compatibility mode Edge?

  2. jvf

    programming madness

    I have never understood why anyone would write code for an application that depended on a browser (or worse, a certain version of a browser whereupon the program would crash or refuse to install if a newer version was on the machine).

    I never did, and lived to tell about it.

    1. sarusa Silver badge

      Re: programming madness

      A lot of the time it's a hardware company that did not want to be in the software business at the time*, but customers were demanding control from PCs. So they hired a contractor to do whatever was easiest, and the contractor doesn't care, he** just poops out whatever's fastest (and back in the 90s, writing a java applet was much faster and easier than dealing with the eldritch horror of C++ / MFC). And of course the contractor doesn't care if it breaks with an MS update - they might get paid to fix it! But it was 10-15 years before this stuff started going away.

      * At this point they've mostly realized this is not going away and actually have software engineers.

      ** In the 90s (and 70s and 80s) it was always a 'he'.

    2. AMBxx Silver badge
      FAIL

      Re: programming madness

      Still happens I often have to switch from Firefox to Chrome.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: programming madness

        That's as effective as switching from everything that is very micro soft, to items that are just soft and very floppy. Installing Viagra might help but it's not a per man andent solution.

        Sorry, I'm a snivelling miserable coward with a joking problem.

    3. Boris the Cockroach Silver badge

      Re: programming madness

      Because in safety critical applications , you want a stable OS/browser/JRE to avoid having to test your system against every update m$(or anyone else) spaffs out.

      You fix the OS version, and you build against that.

      Then release your plant with big warning notices not to connect windows to the internet, along with updates have to be approved by the manufacturer.

      After all... who knows what bugs m$ will put in when trying to remove other bugs and all of a sudden the motion restriction part of the software is 180 degrees out and the robot squishes someone...

      1. nijam Silver badge

        Re: programming madness

        >... your plant with big warning notices not to connect windows to the internet

        I thought by now everywhere had warning notices to never connect Windows to the internet.

    4. Filippo Silver badge

      Re: programming madness

      Back then, it was because it was easier than Win32 and dev time was and is really expensive. I think that's where most of the IE-only apps come from. Luckily, I was good at Win32 and I always felt that using browsers as application platforms was the wrong tool for the job, so I never did that. Well, maybe not so luckily, as I could subsequently have been paid to upgrade the projects over and over again. We're talking about industrial stuff, exactly the sort of crap that is now forcing people to stay on IE and, sometimes, XP, because the program is a client for hardware has a decades lifespan. My properly-designed Win32 programs are still happily running on Win11.

      But nowadays? The ability to run with no installation. The ability to run on multiple platforms. Of course, all of this comes with a lot of caveats, but by the time you find out, it's usually too late.

      A good while ago, I was part of a group that was tasked to get our .NET project running on OSX. Several meetings later, it was decided to switch everything to a web interface, so that it could just run on any platform with a browser. By the time we reached feature parity, we had spent a significant multiple of the time it would have taken to just make an OSX native version. It could run on most browsers on most platforms, but, in practice, no users for any platform except for Windows and OSX ever emerged. And, to add insult to the injury, in the mean time, .NET had been ported to OSX, so the original version could have worked with only minor tweaks, and would've run about five times faster.

  3. arctic_haze

    Who cares?

    Funny thing but I even do not know if my PC still has a working copy of IE. I have been using Firefox since it was still called Phoenix.

  4. ecofeco Silver badge
    FAIL

    Oh FFS

    Update your software ya cheap bastards!

    1. ITS Retired

      Re: Oh FFS

      Finally got it working from the last update. That;s why not. /s

    2. ecofeco Silver badge

      Re: Oh FFS

      5 downvotes? I was referring to the cheap businesses who should be updating their software. IE should have never been their de-facto platform.

      You know, the same folks who don't budget for security either.

  5. mark l 2 Silver badge

    I wish Microsoft would just remove it and for the few people that really need it they have to actively go an enable it from the settings or something. IE needs to die it was the worst POS every to be let loose on the internet.

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