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Microsoft Software

Microsoft Will Bid Farewell To Internet Explorer and Legacy Edge In 2021 (theverge.com) 47

Posted by BeauHD from the phase-out-timetable dept.
Microsoft will end support for Internet Explorer 11 across its Microsoft 365 apps and services next year. The Verge reports: In exactly a year, on August 17th, 2021, Internet Explorer 11 will no longer be supported for Microsoft's online services like Office 365, OneDrive, Outlook, and more. Microsoft is also ending support for Internet Explorer 11 with the Microsoft Teams web app later this year, with support ending on November 30th. While it's still going to take some time to pry enterprise users of Internet Explorer 11 away, Microsoft is hoping that the new Internet Explorer legacy mode in the Chromium-based Microsoft Edge browser will help. It will continue to let businesses access old sites that were specifically built for Internet Explorer, until Microsoft fully drops support for Internet Explorer 11 within Windows 10. Microsoft's move to stop supporting Internet Explorer 11 with its main web properties is a good first step, though.

Alongside the support changes, Microsoft is also planning to drop support for its existing legacy version of Microsoft Edge on March 9th, 2021. After the end of support date, the legacy version of Edge will no longer receive security updates. Microsoft has been moving existing Windows 10 users over to new its Chromium-based Edge browser, and the company says new devices and future Windows feature updates will all include the new Edge browser.
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Microsoft Will Bid Farewell To Internet Explorer and Legacy Edge In 2021 More

Microsoft Will Bid Farewell To Internet Explorer and Legacy Edge In 2021

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  • Well that screws sysadmins (Score:4, Interesting)

    by gmack ( 197796 ) <<gmack> <at> <innerfire.net>> on Monday August 17, 2020 @05:22PM (#60412351) Homepage Journal
    They only thing I ever used IE for was hardware that wouldn't work on anything else and hardware that requires a java plugin to operate. If that's gone, maybe a lot of employers will finally trash a few hundred grand worth of equipment.

  • Ding-dong, the witch is dead!

    IE was terrible. I just hope like what happened with XP that some corporation or government organization (I am looking at you, NHS UK) doesn't pay (with taxpayer money) to keep it alive.

    • One of the primary drivers for me leaving $FORMER_EMPLOYER in the mid 2010s was a requirement to support IE6 on XP, pixel-perfect, alongside Safari on Windows. Seriously, what kind of firm uses Safari on Windows and IE6 by that time.
      • In 2009 my boss walked in and said we need to support IE 6. I quit was my reply. He didn't believe me and started to discus how he had just scored a big client that only has IE 6 on their SOE. I said not going to happen, you will need to get them to add Chrome to their SOE or I am out.

  • iDRAC and CIMC and banking applications (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    I guess this is Microsoft's big "fuck you" for anyone who needs to manage CIMC or iDRAC or ancient web based banking programs that are, for various reasons, partially or wholly reliant on internet explorer.

    If Microsoft can force the likes of Citibank, Cisco and Dell to provide alternatives, that's great, but, if not, this just fucks people over.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by vux984 ( 928602 )

      i can't speak to CIMC, but recent releases of idrac work fine with modern browsers.

      Just how old are your servers, and have you ever actually updated the firmware and idrac software on them? Even my 6-7 year old servers run a new enough version of idrac that they work fine.

      And if the hardware is older than that, seriously, your probably keeping XP and old Java versions kicking around on a VM somewhere to manage them anyway so microsoft turfing support for IE in Win10 in 2021 is not a big deal. And I say that

    • This. I don't believe "legacy IE mode" will actually be a true "legacy IE mode", much like the "Windows 95 / 98 compatibility mode" in Windows NT wasn't a true compatibility mode but was instead missing functionality Microsoft omitted on purpose but left us to discover ourselves anyway (such as non-support for Direct3D 256-color modes and lack of suport for mixed DOS-Windows software). But for once, it's the beancounters who will suffer, not us gamers.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by diems ( 6396892 )

        Makes me wonder now if microsoft could add the Linux subsystem to win10 couldnt they have done the same with NT and added the w98 subsystem for better compatibility?

        • The win98 subsystem wasn't a subsystem. It was just a system.

          If you want compatibility with win98, run it in a vm.

          • I tried running Windows 98SE on Virtual Box. Without additional graphics card drivers thr games complained about needing at least 256-colours (Windows 96/98 works at a minimum of 640x480 resolution which on VGA is limited to 16-colours), and with Display Doctor or VBEMP drivers the games would just crash on launch.

    • Even HPE's out-of-band management, iLO, didn't support TLS 1.2 and HTML5 until hardware version 4, and the latter was only added with a somewhat-recent firmware update. Anything older, and you'll still need .NET, ActiveX, or Java support for the full experience.

      Heck, even SonicOS 5 won't load the IPv4/IPv6 selection screen on anything but Internet Explorer. Even their recent firmware updates for URGENT11 didn't address this.

  • Flash based learning Portals (Score:4, Interesting)

    by spiffydudex ( 1458363 ) on Monday August 17, 2020 @05:33PM (#60412401)

    I know what you're going to say, but flash based e-learning is still quite popular in the enterprise space and are still actively updated.
    I wonder if the legacy mode will support flash based e-learning portals. Flash to HTML5 isn't without its own trials and tribulations.

    • and are still actively updated

      PART OF THE PROBLEM!

      If anyone at this point updates anything flash based without migrating it to something else they should be shot, and then fired for good measure in case they survive.

  • 'nuff said

  • Encrypted webmail (Score:3)

    by bosef1 ( 208943 ) on Monday August 17, 2020 @05:50PM (#60412463)

    So... how will people digitally sign or encrypt e-mail. I haven't really played around with it, but doesn't the Microsoft Webmail server only support using an IE-based plug-in?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dissy ( 172727 )

      So... how will people digitally sign or encrypt e-mail. I haven't really played around with it, but doesn't the Microsoft Webmail server only support using an IE-based plug-in?

      It supports it with a Chrome plugin too.
      I assume it will be that same plugin for new-edge.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by bosef1 ( 208943 )

        Neat, thanks for the info. I did some Google searching based on your comment, and found this link about using the OWA S/MIME plugin with IE, and with Chrome and Edge.

        https://support.microsoft.com/... [microsoft.com]

        So it appears I just need to talk to my local Mordak about getting things set up. It would be great to not need to use IE anymore.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by tokul ( 682258 )

      > So... how will people digitally sign or encrypt e-mail.
      If you care about signatures and email encryption, you don't store your private keys on web server and use standalone email client.

    • Are you even serious?

  • People using IE now, wil continue using it. The actual "end of IE" wil take years.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by edis ( 266347 )

      People using IE now, wil continue using it. The actual "end of IE" wil take years.

      Unless they are on Win 10. Think about it.

  • It says "Best Viewed in Internet Explorer" and it wasn't available, so I couldn't. And since they've taken away IE, I can't even browse the internet anymore since I only have Netscape still on floppies.

    On a different topic, I recently read an article [slashdot.org] about Google labeling "fast pages" on some websites.

    Really? Just how long DOES it take to send a bunch of HTML <body> and <h1> tags? Oh, waaaaait...... I guess <blink> is more resource intensive that I though, having to resend the en

  • 3rd time is a charm ... ander (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Tablizer ( 95088 ) on Monday August 17, 2020 @06:16PM (#60412561) Journal

    After two browser screw-ups in a row, Microsoft should take a hint and get out of the browser business. However, I hate to give Google a near monopoly. It's the Rock Browser versus Hardplace Browser.

    • Same boat here. Devil browser and the Deep Sea browser.

      But still, when my home machine did a software update that brought up the Edge browser up, occupying the full screen, with a modal dialog, with no option other than "continue the setup". Was instantly reminded of why I hate microsoft that much. Could not minimize it, stopped the boot sequence mid stride with this thing hogging the screen.

      Clicked on continue, and click X as soon as it was enabled. Unpinned from the task bar, deleted the desktop icon

    • Microsoft should take a hint and get out of the browser business

      I take it you've not used Edge then? My own assessment of Edge: It's Chrome, with automatic IE legacy support, and a PDF reader with editing and pen support.

      Basically it's the perfect browser to have on a business machine. I don't touch it with a 10ft pole at home, but I stopped using Chrome on my work machine and switched to Edge, and unlike all previous fuckups, it does actually just work.

  • Microsoft say "Fuck it! I give up".

  • Unusual choice (Score:4, Interesting)

    by The1stImmortal ( 1990110 ) on Monday August 17, 2020 @06:50PM (#60412671)

    Interesting decision considering IE11 is still the only browser shipped natively with Server 2019 and Windows 10 LTSC, and both have quite a long support lifecycle yet.

    Particularly given the number of 365 integrations and web based services (like Admin Center) that 2019 now pushes.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by edis ( 266347 )

      IE is the only browser, very popular hotel management system Opera (now of Oracle) is created and debugged for, this is IE+Java application. Your stay in hotels is quite often processed by that. Migrating hotels around the world to replacement system is going to be pricey one. In making Windows 10 unconditionally dependent on decisions from Redmond, it is very good example how deprived of control in return are users of their products. We are in very poor times of computing by now, where choices get increasi

    • Interesting decision considering IE11 is still the only browser shipped natively with Server 2019

      Yeah, that surprised me too. I get that Microsoft Edge is tied to the OS, and they (intentionally) removed that in the process of converting Windows 10 to Windows Server. Still, Chromium Edge is technically a third-party app. They could have even had it installed after Windows Setup, if they didn't want to formally bake it into the image.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by edis ( 266347 )

        What makes you think, Windows Server is result of converted Windows 10? It is separate beast for many, many years. It has got Windows 10 UI base upon Server 2019, that's true.

  • I said goodbye from the get-go.

  • So Microsoft is saying bye bye to Internet Explorer and legacy Edge. I think I can somehow deal with this catastrophe...I never said hello to them in the first place.

  • Will the WebBrowser ole control also be deprecated? Will a replacement be provided? What about Office desktop app AddIn's? Will they be hosted in the new Edge?

    What about Outlook's HTML email support? Can we finally have standards compliant email?

  • SSRS, SCCM Reporting, Sharepoint, SilverLight, none of that works well (or at all in the case of SilverLight) on any other browser than IE. We have lots of legacy web apps that were written around working well with IE. Some probably haven't had code changes in years because "if it ain't broke..."
  • Can we even delete internet explorer and/or microsoft edge? The wonky workaround we have at work is to rename some folders.

    It would be odd to make a stink about how you are dropping support even though you force this on our install. I think internet explorer libraries were still used by other operating system components until recently too.
    • On Windows 10, you can "uninstall" Internet Explorer, which removes the user-facing shortcuts. However, the Trident engine is still used by Windows (and curiously, the Edge MSA/AAD login pop-up), so it's not really gone for good. Heck, installing ChrEdge keeps the legacy Edge rendering engine around, because it's used to render Store apps.

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