RIP Internet Explorer
- Thread starter soxhop411
- Start date
To me, it seemed like Internet Explorer jumped the shark when the Internet Explorer-related anti trust issues popped up. There was a time in which it was a pretty good browser in my opinion.
M
MentalDisabldLst
Guest
No, but maybe around the Netscape 6 era, circa 2000. IE 6 was a legitimately better browser than Netscape 6 at the time. Since the rise of Firefox, IE hasn't even been on the same lap of the race.
It's always been the "default" browser. Nothing else. The next competition solved so many problems..
So I tend to actually use Chrome and IE at work since some software only works on IE, but in general, what are the major differences between all the major browsers now? I feel like this is a topic that people tend to dig in on, and I've never really stopped to see what the fuss is all about.
My own take on this is not the death of IE, rather they are just, once again, late to the party. Chrome, Firefox, hell even Palemoon each have Android versions, cut down to be usable on phones and tablets. MS intends to try and stay in the phone market and needs this. Windows 8 has cured them of the delusion that there can be one OS interface for everywhere that won't piss off pretty much everyone.
Wow it's crazy that its only been 15 years; I had to look it up. We've come a long way pretty quickly. I do have fonder memories of Netscape over IE but I definitely wasn't making judgements then based on anything but superficiality.MentalDisabldLst said:
Chuck Z said:
The casual user won't notice any difference.
What we need is for Apple and Microsoft to make their latest browsers compatible with all versions of their Operating System. That will go a long way in killing off the old Safari's and IE's still out in the wild.
IE11 isn't terrible from my perspective (limited...still avoid anything IE unless I have to deal with it specifically). Once you back out of the touch interface that is.Blacken said:
No, because that means more mouth-breathing fuckerwits with the exact amount of knowledge to be dangerous (which is to say, a little) insisting that, no, it's great to stick on XP forever. Those people should have their computers taken away from them as a danger to public safety, not have partial but very incomplete protection through the web browser.rembrat said:
Blacken said:
This a thousand times.
The problem right now is that you have critical businesses relying on software built for IE 6/7 and doesn't work with contemporary (read: significantly more secure) browsers. Abandoning the IE brand is a useful signal to lazy IT departments that nothing will run on IE anymore and they need to give it up.
Blacken said:
But Trident itself lacks basically any real connection to the one in IE 8 other than branding. And Chakra doesn't suck. In fact, IE 10/11 bears only passing resemblance to IE 8. These ModernTM ones are actually pretty decent browsers. They're really hampered by the shitty legacy of IE's brand... Especially if you expect me to go on IE on my Xbox like an old fart. No thank you.
If renaming IE 12 will help people embrace a decent contemporary and supported browser, then good.
Well one of the benefits of IE is that a well run IT department will probably prefer it. By not giving a user admin access to the PC and using the browser that integrates more cleanly into AD/GPO it's not the worst choice ever. It also solves the 'one neck to wring' dilemma as it pertains to support.
Personally, I still do not recommend it to any of our clients, but it's existence in the right environment would not cause me angst.
Personally, I still do not recommend it to any of our clients, but it's existence in the right environment would not cause me angst.
zenter said:
I think the thing is people have already embraced it, at least when it comes to IE. From what I've seen, in a broad sense you can divide IE users into two camps: people on IE 11, and people still on XP using IE 8.
Because they finally went to auto-updates, almost no one is on IE10. And I don't know that re-branding IE will get anyone off of XP, which means they're still going to be using IE8.
The IE landscape isn't terrible anymore. IE11 is fine (Chakra has been more than fine). It's a modern browser, and I sometimes user it when Chrome goes all Chromer (fairly common since v33 or so). But I don't see how this fixes the OS problem, and I think that's what is really driving the leftover crap on 8.
tldr; The people that could/would embrace a rename already have. The rest of the fuckwads are on XP.
rembrat said:
I'm a professional software engineer. This is ludicrously impossible to do. It will never happen.
Spelunker said:
We don't fundamentally disagree, but I think you underestimate the degree to which 1) people are lazy, and 2) the fuckwads are policy-setters (VPs, CIOs/CTOs, etc).
For instance, I worked with one CTO/CIO who refused to acknowledge that clients used browsers other than IE. In 2012. Even when presented with actual data. The clients, incidentally, were college/grad students on their own computers. It took unnecessary weeks of time and effort it took me to run this up through "proper" channels so he'd change the application testing/QA regime to include something Mac-compatible.
Imagine this scenario where the client is internal users and the industry manages truly sensitive data, and you can see how a nice big headline: "IE is dead" would convince even the laziest CIO fuckwad to move his stupid ass.
I admit I'm totally out of my depth talking about things on this level so thanks for clarifying my first post.
How do we get people off old ass browsers then? All major modern browser feature a self update option but you can turn it off so that doesn't work 100% of the time.
How do we get people off old ass browsers then? All major modern browser feature a self update option but you can turn it off so that doesn't work 100% of the time.
It works pretty well, actually. At least in the consumer market: auto-updating browsers tend to have almost everyone on the newest version. Looking at traffic on the sites that I manage, basically no one is on a version of Chrome earlier than 37 (there's a version of 35 that is around 1.5% of Chrome traffic (.5% of all) but that's the only one above 1%).
IE shows the bifurcation that I mentioned: 52% of all IE traffic is 11 (17% of total) and the next version is 8 at 17% of IE (3% of total). Autoupdate works less well for IE than it does for other browsers, but basically it's the greatest thing to happen in forever. There's a long tail, and you can't get everyone off of old browsers, but as long as you deal with the margins gracefully you don't have to.
If only we could get the fuckers off of IE8/XP.
IE shows the bifurcation that I mentioned: 52% of all IE traffic is 11 (17% of total) and the next version is 8 at 17% of IE (3% of total). Autoupdate works less well for IE than it does for other browsers, but basically it's the greatest thing to happen in forever. There's a long tail, and you can't get everyone off of old browsers, but as long as you deal with the margins gracefully you don't have to.
If only we could get the fuckers off of IE8/XP.
zenter said:
Trust me, I get it. Internally we have applications that are pegged to IE8 because of decisions made about proprietary software ages ago. It blows. But I think it's only a real concern when your market is niche to that audience. If it's consumer, especially if it's US, the battle is already won. (if you operate in China, my apologies).
A large chunk of my traffic comes from schools, and they're not generally the best when it comes to aging systems so I know what you mean. But IT departments trying to hold the line on this stuff have been largely swallowed up: they're a tiny percentage of the overall landscape (especially given that 30-40% of traffic is going to be mobile/device based). Feature detect and fallback, and you handle that 3% fine.
You turn off their Internet access (redirecting away from all sites other than the Firefox/Chrome download pages or the downloaders for Ubuntu and Windows 8.1) until they upgrade to newer browsers. It's really shitty, but it's the only way to do it.rembrat said:
Most real companies are deploying software via packages these days so it almost doesn't matter.Blacken said:
Some are lazy, some don't give a shit and some are cheap. Eventually those browsers will be inoperable and their hands will be forced.
I mean take SoSH. If it's a problem with a browser that only 1% of our users use them I'll probably not even bother replying to it in backwash, much less do anything about it.
Blacken said:
It's also a huge memory sink for me as well, and I run virtually no extensions on it. I'm wondering what browsers people are using out there, because I'm looking for options.
PBDWake said:
I was a huge fan of chrome because of the bookmark syncing across multiple devices but the battery/memory drain really is terrible. I've been using Firefox again recently and it seems much snappier. A lot of the extensions I used on chrome seem to be on Firefox as well.
Depends on what system I'm using.
If I'm on a win 8 system, I'll flip back between IE (in app mode) and firefox depending on what I'm doing. If I'm on any other system, I only use firefox. I find chrome and safari insufferable.
If I'm on a win 8 system, I'll flip back between IE (in app mode) and firefox depending on what I'm doing. If I'm on any other system, I only use firefox. I find chrome and safari insufferable.
Pale Moon for those who want a 64 bit option and what Firefox was : a browser you could customize to your liking.
soxhop411 said:
Never going to happen....sorry. He didn't author this from the ground up and the basis doesn't make it possible...btw the existing Android version of Pale Moon is also based on different underpinnings than the Windows versions.