back to article Microsoft faces up to an old foe with out-of-band patch for PDF weirdness

Internet Explorer 11 may only have a year left, but Microsoft still found itself releasing a patch to resolve some PDF issues in the elderly browser. The issue could stop PDFs working in either IE 11 itself or the all-important WebBrowser control, upon which many apps depend (despite Microsoft pushing out Edge-friendly …

  1. Hubert Cumberdale

    Jesus – are people still using that sh#t?!

    1. General Purpose

      Outlook 2019's "View in Browser" still opens an email in Internet Explorer. Maybe one day ...

      1. Boothy

        Never used the option before (to view in Browser).

        Just tried it here, and got a "How do you want to open this file" prompt. IE was the default option, but Edge was the 2nd one, with other options below. Plus the tick box at the bottom to remember the selection.

        I selected Edge, and ticked the box, it just opened immediately in Edge after that point.

        Not much of a view tbh, as it's just the raw HTML text, not processed in anyway. Might as well have opened in Notepad (which was also an option). Is it different in IE?

        For ref, I'm on a corporate Windows 10 Enterprise machine, with the MS 365 version of desktop Outlook (version 2008 build 13127.21668, release date June 8, 2021).

        Perhaps have a look at your default apps by file type under settings ?

        Mine open as .mht files in Edge, but when I looked, I noticed these were now Edge, but the .mhtml files were still defaulted to IE.

        Try changing those to Edge and try again?

        1. General Purpose

          I'd tried it again before posting and got the same result as you, i.e. there is now an option to use Edge, but Edge only displays the raw HTML. IE, on the other hand, rendered it fully.

          Yes, I'd tried switching default apps by file setting too, changing .mht and .mhtml to Edge, but that hadn't helped either.

          Happily, Outlook 2019 is displaying things fine by itself and I only stumbled on this while testing a couple of years ago. Now I just revisit it whenever I see that MS are definitely retiring IE real soon now.

    2. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

      Yeah. For one of our work webapps, printing only works in IE with Crystal Reports (yuk). Neither the app nor Crystal Reports are going to be updated (no idea if the suppliers have or not, but we won't be), so it's either use IE or, from other browsers, print to PDF then print that. And yes, printing is actually important and not optional in this case.

  2. Brian Miller

    Bork Bingo or Clue?

    "Internet Explorer 11 and the Adobe Reader plug-in?" On the desktop?

    Most of the time these things read sort of like a whodunit, with a different ending based on what random thing happened. And then after the software is "retired," it's frightening to see how long it's used without updates. I think my landlord is still on Windows 7...

    1. gzgweilo

      Re: Bork Bingo or Clue?

      "I think my landlord is still on Windows 7..."

      And........

      So am I and many others :-)

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Bork Bingo or Clue?

        Still on Windows 7, still getting free updates thanks to BypassESU.

        Anon because you never know who's watching :-)

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