Microsoft Upgrading Windows Users To Latest Version of MSIE

helix2301 writes "Microsoft will be upgrading all Windows XP, Vista and 7 users to the latest IE silently. They are doing this because they have found a large number of non-patched systems. Microsoft pointed out that Chrome and Firefox do this regularly. They will start with Australia and Brazil in January, then go world-wide after they have assured there are no issues."

finally!

[sneakyimp]

I can't believe it's taken this long.

Web Applications

[David89]

What about all the companies that use older versions of IE because of compatibility with their own proprietary web applications?

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

IE9 for XP?

[Svenne]

Really? When did this happen?

Don't you mean IE6/IE7?

[Millennium]

Unfortunately, Microsoft chose not to support IE9 on Windows XP, so we're going to be stuck with IE8 for quite some time yet.

Mind you, this is still cause for some celebration, as IE8 represents major improvement over its predecessors. But it's not the fundamental fix to the Web that an update to IE9 would be. When Microsoft swallows its pride and ports it (or puts XP support into IE10), that will be cause for dancing in the streets.

Re:Lots of intranet apps still stuck on IE6.0

[GameboyRMH]

From what I understand, some SAP products are locked into IE6 (so I have read.) It's ridiculuous that that's the case, but it is what it is.

Yep we have to keep IE6 on accountants' computers just for ACCPAC. That said we install Firefox on those and set it as the default browser.

No! It is a bad idea!!

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm a web developer who actually LIKES IE 6 & IE 7.

If a client wants IE 6 compatibility, I get to charge them a significant premium. Please MS, don't do this.

Re:For your own good

[Beardo the Bearded]

I just got moved up to IE8 at work. It was IE6 for years, moved to 7 in September. That choice is made by the IT department, and they have to confirm that there aren't issues with the various bits of software being run on the Intranet.

Not everyone uses their computers exclusively at home / at a coffee shop.

And no, we can't just use portable Foo on a USB drive.

Re:For your own good

[s1d3track3D]

Yes, this is great in general (assuming they keep aiming for standards compliance) Personal users benefit, developers benefit, browser competition benefits, etc.

However, I know many Corporations that have in-house applications that can ONLY run on IE6. Often these legacy apps are extremely important for the company and are non-trivial to update to more recent browser versions. (or, the company does not have the resources to work on this)

For many corp's this will be an IT nightmare.

(however, I mean really, these Co's have had 20 years to upgrade these app and they have chosen not to, so at some point maybe a 'stick' is needed)

Being "different" will bite MS in the ass...

[irregular_hero]

Don't get me wrong; I'm all in favor of this -- I want earlier versions of IE to die a thousand silent deaths, but...

This will hurt some large enterprises who have specifically designed certain website features to work only in IE. Older versions of IE tended to have some quirky rendering behaviors and a lot of sites rely on those quirks. Taking the browser directly to the latest IE will render things in IE "Standards" mode which will break some of these sites.

They better read up on how to explicitly set IE rendering modes:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc288325(v=vs.85).aspx

Three ways to do this: 1) do it in the page body with a META tag, 2) do it in the HTTP headers with the X-UA-Compatible header, or 3) push a GPO update to your internal IE clients that forces the browser to render the sites you specify in "IE Compatibility Mode".

Re:For your own good

[viperidaenz]

It took the company I'm working for a kick from microsoft to upgrade from IE6 to IE8. Someone convinced them sharepoint was the product they needed for their intranet, which nolonger supports IE6. 5000 desktops upgraded and internal apps fixed over a period of a year or so

Re:For your own good

[DeathFromSomewhere]

I did a quick bit of googling and it seems IE9 handles it as defined by the W3C standard, it's the other browsers that are broken. http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd573303(v=vs.85).aspx [microsoft.com]

Granted I'm not a web dev so I could be way off on this.

Re:For your own good

[Canazza]

There's still the issue of the differences between IE 8 and 9. There's a few issues with some of our toolkit that just can't be fixed without forcing IE 9 into IE 8 standards mode. Granted, it's just a matter of sticking a meta tag in the header, but, funilly enough, if you don't make that meta tag the FIRST meta tag, IE 9 throws a MAJOR wobbly and won't execute it, or any of the other command meta tags. And will still run the controls wrongly.

Just for reference, if anyone else has wondered why their code won't work in IE 9 but does in 8, the meta tag is <meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=EmulateIE8" />

it's amazing how many extra tags, conditional comments and js hacks have to be implemented just to accommodate Internet Explorer. And yes, many corporate networks still have 10 year old code that only runs in IE 6, that is the crux of their productivity suite. It's an utter shambles honestly. And MS is entirely to blame.

Re:start with Australia and Brazil

[westlake]

Do they start with Australia and Brazil because they do not care about the users there?

Looking at Statcounter, I noticed two things about Australia and Brazil:

IE 8 is the dominant browser in both countries (30% each) and IE 6 doesn't even make the top 12 in either country. The last of the hold-outs running IE 6 should not be a problem.