[justinlink]

I work on a B2B app with a lot of local govt users. We dropped support officially for IE11 last summer and I was surprised by the little to no pushback.

Our stance was if you needed to use IE11 for a legacy application, that's fine -- but our application required something besides IE and you're not limited to only one browser on your computer.

Any stances by IT that they haven't had a chance to authorize another browser or prove that another browser was secure compared to IE11 is an absolute joke at this point. Any IT department that is telling users to use IE11 for security reasons is questionable imho.

[leipert]

Same thing happened at GitLab when we dropped IE11 support last May. No pushback or feedback from users at all: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/-/issues/197987

[inopinatus]

The trick to minimising negative comment is ensuring your feedback form doesn't work in IE11 either.

[ogurechny]

They learn from the best: a certain “open-source project to help move the web forward” has a bug tracker that simply doesn't load anything without Javascript, or in incompatible browsers.

It is funny how “moving forward” without brakes tacitly demands that others must clear the path and lay the tracks in order to prevent crashes.

[newaccount9]

Salesforce went down the other day, our Salesforce based customer portal was down. So was the case management system customers use to lodge issues.

[justinlink]

Yep -- I thank those who fought that battle back in 2017-2019, as by time we got around to it, it was nothing. I bet we spent more time talking about if we should do it, when, and messaging than our support team has dealt with customers trying to use IE11.

It still comes up, we had a question this week from an IE11 user, and they just let them know to use another browser and they always do.

There is no fight left in the IE11 user base.

[godman_8]

Hopefully with Microsoft's aggressive updating policies in Win10 old Edge will be killed off soon. We'll be sitting pretty when it comes to web standards. Safari lags behind but not by much.

[pjerem]

In our team, every time there was a bug in Safari, it was something awfully wrong in our code that just happened to work on Chrome/FF for mysterious reasons. I never had a problem on Safari with standard quality code.

[slaymaker1907]

This is being far too kind to Safari. They were the ones who unilaterally decided that 7 days is sufficient time to clear out localStorage and IndexedDB.

Additionally, found this recent post going into why Safari is hot garbage. https://infrequently.org/2021/04/progress-delayed/

While the File System Access API is still being developed, I'm not holding my breath for it to appear on iOS. To be fair, it isn't supported yet on mobile Chrome (for Android obviously), but I expect it will be added quickly after the v1 of the API is finalized. I expect it will either never appear on iOS or it will take 5+ years from now...

[edoceo]

HTML5 date and time inputs still don't work on Safari tho.

[leesalminen]

Safari 14.1 for desktop looks to be getting closer. Same for 14.5 on mobile.

https://caniuse.com/?search=Date

[yjftsjthsd-h]

> We'll be sitting pretty when it comes to web standards.

You'll be sitting pretty on standards, or you'll be able to just target Chrome and forget about standards?

[kungito]

Exactly, what a ridiculous statement from GP. Now it seems like the web might end up in webgl canvases anyways

[babypuncher]

Apple should ditch WebKit and adopt Gecko. Mozilla could use the funding. and the two organizations share similar philosophies on user privacy. It would also deal a significant blow to the growing Blink monoculture.

[diegof79]

According to the book “Creative Selection” (by one of the original Safari devs). They tried with Gecko first, but the POC didn’t went far: the build system at that time was messy and they couldn’t get it work. So they switched to KHTML, because of the nice code base. That internal fork evolved to WebKit.

[DaiPlusPlus]

I remember peeking around the Gecko codebase when Firefox got popular - and yeah, it was pretty gnarly. I remember seeing related .cpp files in the same directory using different naming conventions, for example.

I’m told Gecko is a lot better now though.

[stephenr]

By that logic Firefox should drop gecko and adopt WebKit. It’s already maintained by a megacorp and isn’t blink.

[babypuncher]

WebKit is close enough to Blink that this move would be bad for the ecosystem as a whole. More variety in web technology implementations makes it harder for any one approach to dictate the standards going forwards.

[sonthonax]

Why should they? WebKit was developed by Apple, and is deeply integrated in the OS.

[archangel_one]

It was originally developed as part of KDE (KHTML), although Apple have obviously done a lot with it since.

[atatatat]

Apple probably has no interest in throwing good money after bad, with regards to security work involved in making that feasible.

[addicted]

The major difference was MS aggressively pushing against IE11.

It really gives management no opportunity to stand still on this anymore.

[sodapopcan]

Heh, ya, same deal where I work. Dropped support I think two years ago now. Anyone who asks doesn't complain when they are told to use a different browser.

[JMTQp8lwXL]

Gitlab may not be the best example of potential pushback because the userbase is largely technologists. With this particular group, deprecating IE11 support is "preaching to the choir".

[leipert]

I think you are right on one hand, on the other hand I expected certain customers to have IE11 support as a requirement on paper.

[giancarlostoro]

Probably after the WannaCry shitshow people stopped trying to hang on to legacy exploitable Operating Systems.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WannaCry_ransomware_attack

[stuartd]

If the $1,000,000 specialist machine you absolutely rely on needs XP or 9x, which is very often the case in medical or industrial scenarios, that's not an option. What you _can_ do is use an alternative to the built-in (un-updateable) browser: although you won't be able to get the most up-to-date version of any alternative browser, it's still way better.

[giancarlostoro]

If that's the case, I would argue you should only use that specialized machine for specialized needs and have a more modern system for regular internet usage. Firewall the specialized hardware from any non-whitelisted sites / network addresses with extreme prejudice. Why risk a million dollar system to open a funny email with cat pictures, oh no its a virus.

[michaelmrose]

Your highly important specialist machine is probably remotely exploitable for as much damage as replacement cost if it also needs a web browser and an internet connection.

Also a browser that is years behind current has a trail of breadcrumbs in terms of fixed bugs for newer versions. It is probably nearly as bad as the built-in option.

[giancarlostoro]

> Your highly important specialist machine is probably remotely exploitable for as much damage as replacement cost if it also needs a web browser and an internet connection.

Correct. Those versions of Windows will not bet getting any crucial or critical updates.

You're better off trying to see if ReactOS / FreeDOS will run the damn thing.

[hajile]

The only reason for continued IE11 support is because it shipped with Window 10 and they guaranteed that core software would be updated for a lot of years.

[8ytecoder]

Back in the day (2009ish), we dropped support for IE6 for all but a few sections of our website that were used by employees of financial institutions. Same story - chrome was just gaining popularity and it was an easy sell. We had this giant banner for IE6 users to download Firefox or Chrome. Saved us so much time in development and testing.

[cogman10]

Oh, not for us. I think we dropped support in like 2012 our 13 ish and our clients lost their shit. So many of them would cite the fact that they had special activex plugins installed into IE which made them more "secure".

Dropping 8 was a lot easier to do and we probably could ditch 11 today without a fuss. But man were our clients attached to 6, it was nuts.

[spookthesunset]

Urg... Even in 2012 IE6 was ancient. If I was doing freelance and a client wanted IE6 support, I'm pretty sure I'd quadruple my rate and let them know it will take ten times as long to complete. Fuck IE6.

[Sohcahtoa82]

I just looked it up because I wasn't sure how old it was...

...and damn. IE6 was released in 2001, and the last update was 2008.

By 2012, IE9 was the norm, and IE 10 came out late in the year. That's also around the time that Chrome started gaining significant market share.

[gitowiec]

Yeah, that was bad browser for a developer who wanted to code only by standards. But in the other hand, back then when IE6 was released - it was the best.

[scottward]

See my song from 2009, "IE is Being Mean to Me Again": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vTTzwJsHpU8

[floatboth]

Wow, I remember that one! :)

[dathinab]

I think the following two fact that played a big role in it:

1) Microsoft has another "official" browser

2) Chrome "eats the world", many people use it at home and many sites only officially support chrome. In many ways chrome has become the new IE. (Sites relying on non standardized Chrome specific quirks and being broken on other browsers, especially if they are not at least partially chromium based.)

[cezart]

I recently got actually burned by this. I was implementing the redesign for a friend’s website. I was working in Firefox, cause that’s the browser I want to support. The page seemed pixel perfect to me. Then my friend told me there was a subscription form he didn’t want at the bottom of the page. What was my suprise when I found out that there was an entire partial with an html error in it, that I missed in code, which was rendered in Chrome, but it was not rendered at all in Firefox.

[drewzero1]

I've been a Firefox user since version 2 and experienced this kind of thing early on.

Years ago I was making a GeoCities page and thought it would be a great idea to add a little picture/icon that followed the pointer around on the webpage (because that was a "cool feature" offered on the site builder at that time). I couldn't get it to work no matter which picture I tried, and I kept trying to add them many more times before eventually giving up on it.

Some time later I wanted to show off the site to a family member on their computer. I pulled up Internet Explorer (because they didn't have Firefox) and navigated to my webpage, where I was greeted by a swarm of icons following the pointer around and slowing the whole computer to a drag.

Lesson learned, test on multiple browsers because people will probably view your site in multiple browsers.

[devwastaken]

I'm more concerned about older mobile browsers. Almost everyone can install firefox/chrome on older PC's, but plenty are still running old android or non android phones as their only means of a 'computer'.

[Red_Leaves_Flyy]

I've got a couple old android devices that won't even load most websites these days. Hell, the play store doesn't even work anymore. It's similar on old apple devices, but not quite as bad.

[waheoo]

This is such an utter failing of the ecosystem.

It's why I call out bullshit whenever I hear Android is Linux.

[throwaways885]

Android is Linux, even if it doesn't follow the philosophy of your favourite Linux distributions. Maybe RMS had a point when suggesting people call it GNU/Linux. Maybe Android/Linux?

[yjftsjthsd-h]

Yep: GNU/Linux is very different from busybox/Linux is still different from Android/Linux, because the userland is (often) more important than the kernel; a user of Debian GNU/Linux has more in common with GNU/kFreeBSD than Android/Linux.

[Kye]

It's more like Google Play Services/Linux these days.

[gtk40]

Yes, it's a very different experience running Android with Amazon's setup on a Fire Device than on with Google Play Services, even if it's binary compatible.

[Red_Leaves_Flyy]

It's also a symptom of a wasteful greed driven system. By abandoning old hardware the industry at large can quietly force people into 'regular' upgrade cycles. That's two years for their ideal consumers who trade in their old phones and get the latest. At most it's like 6-8 years before the hardware is simply too old to possibly keep running. Many frugal people run a cycle or two behind, eg they're on iPhones (or model year equivalents) 8-11 currently depending on their cycle timeline. There's no way out of the cycle. I had a few coworkers get dropped by their cell providers over the last few years as the carriers dropped support for cell phones they bought in the 20xxs.

Essentially this planned obsolescence is manufactured consent in the population wide crowd funding of cellular technologies by for profit (mainly public) companies providing essential communication services.

I'll leave the moralizing of this to philosophers, but all these dynamics and their externalities undeniably bear further scrutiny.

[userbinator]

The way to get out of the cycle is to push back with great force. Unfortunately people are too easily swayed by propaganda.

[luke2m]

It’s usually a certificate issue: if you install Firefox things should mostly work.

[tanaypingalkar]

yes , i also use a old phone which is probably 5 year old which only supports 1 of 10 websites. The chrome crashes all the times that is why i always use pc. The mobile phone market is growing quickly and we have to updates every month. Even window's needs to update montly. But still there are lot of people who wont buy new phone's every year but smartphone brands will never understand.

[breakfastduck]

Not an issue for enterprise though, really.

[rk06]

Edge is also available on android. I don't know if it supports older android versions though

[gruez]

don't androids use chrome by default, which can be updated through the play store?

[ccouzens]

Chrome requires android 7 (about 5 years old). Firefox requires android 5 (about 7 years old).

Very old phones don't get browser updates.

https://m.apkpure.com/google-chrome-fast-secure/com.android....

https://m.apkpure.com/firefox-browser-fast-private-safe-web-...

[CodesInChaos]

My phone is on android 6.0.1 and has Chrome installed (latest version), so the Android 7+ claim on that website seems inaccurate.

[skissane]

How many people use 5+ or 7+ year old phones? I’m sure they exist somewhere but I don’t know any of them.

It isn’t hard to get a 2-3 year old phone for free. A lot of people buy a new phone every 2-3 years and many of those people will be happy to give away their old phone if someone they know needs one

[Sayrus]

While I think this is mostly true for western countries, I don't think this applies to everywhere in the world.

According to statcounter [1], Android 5.1 and 4.4 account for 8% of the devices in Africa while it accounts for 3% in Europe

[1] https://gs.statcounter.com/android-version-market-share/mobi...

[jlokier]

Mine is about 4 years old.

It's still a great phone, runs everything I've run on it really well, and as far as I can tell it's working as well the day I bought it. Still receives firmware updates too.

Its data connection is still faster than any other 4G device I've used, and faster than my home internet connection. The battery still lasts all day, and the ludicrously high resolution OLED screen is still in perfect condition.

It's hard to see why I'd want to replace it before it breaks.

If it lasts, I'll probably keep it a few more years, and because of the good experience, if it breaks I might get the same 4-year old model again second hand.

Even if you gave me a new phone for free, I'd put it in a drawer because there's no obvious benefit and considerable hassle to moving over.

[Izkata]

My previous phone was 8 years old by the time I upgraded, went straight from Android 2.1 to 7. My current one is 3 years old and I don't see any reason to upgrade anytime soon.

[awiesenhofer]

Phones sure, but dont forget tablets. There are loads of old outdated but still perfectly functional ones out there.

[petschge]

I do. Because I live in an area where I need to use CDMA. Sure, there is a couple of spots in town that have other cell phone networks as well, but in a lot of spots and basically all buildings you need to use Verizon (or one of the resellers) or be without a cell signal. And sure they have LTE as well, but AFAIK the initial connection to the network is always over CDMA. And except for google maps (that freezes my phone for minutes, but is easily replaced by Osmand) and the banking app for one of my banks (I'd probably use that once a year to deposit a check because THAT technology is also not dead yet), there is nothing that doesn't work well on my Android 6 Samsung J1 Luna.

[ipaddr]

Mine is 7+. I'd love a phone for free but then I lose my unlimited calling and data as I would have to switch to a more expensive plan.

Buying a phone outright costs more than a computer. $1200 for the latest samsung. A two or three year old phone could cost $500.00.

I do need a new phone as the buttons barely are able turn on the screen but I see no viable upgrade path.

[earthboundkid]

Cintex Wireless is giving away free Kyocera Hydro phones to subsidized users in the US. It's so old it can't connect to any HTTPS website. :-(

[zild3d]

think it depends on the manufacturer. Samsung ships with their own (chromium) browser

[munchbunny]

Even ignoring non-Microsoft browsers, there's Edge as a still-Microsoft, still-Windows alternative to IE that can be remotely/centrally managed with the same mechanisms. There really shouldn't be any reason to stick with IE11 anymore.

The only real remaining argument I can think of for IE11 is if you still have business-critical, legacy ActiveX applications.

[hhh]

There is even IE Mode in Edge for enterprises that truly need something in IE. Automotive industry has a lot of these still. 10-20 apps that are interacted with only work with IE.

[acdha]

> I work on a B2B app with a lot of local govt users. We dropped support officially for IE11 last summer and I was surprised by the little to no pushback.

I think the big part is that Microsoft wasn't just aggressive in pushing Edge but _especially_ emphasizing that IE11 was nowhere near as secure. Large bureaucratic organizations have a lot of inertia but they're getting a lot of pressure, especially at the federal level, to step up security and that overrides a lot of the familiar stalling tactics.

[josephcsible]

"Questionable" is an understatement. Anyone who requires or suggests IE for security reasons in 2021 is incompetent.

[babypuncher]

Anyone who requires or suggests IE for ANY reason in 2021 is incompetent.

[TheCoelacanth]

I could see a competent person suggesting it for use as a honeypot for attracting malware, but not for use as a browser.

[phendrenad2]

It was always a joke honestly, the kinds of customers who mandated IE11 were always more trouble than they were worth, even when IE11 was current.

[hateful]

Every time in the past where I had to switch to IE11 in order to use a site, I would always say out loud:

"This site requires an insecure browser."

[kiawe_fire]

When I first started with my current company, old IE support was driven by our customer’s IT departments not having other browsers installed.

We’re now sort of unofficially NOT supporting IE 11 in so much as new features don’t get tested until someone complains.

What’s been interesting is that all of our government employees’ IT do have Chrome, Edge Chromium, and sometimes even FF installed, but the individual users are still trying to use IE11, and often will not accept “you must use one of the other browsers that you have available” as an option.

We’ve even gotten support tickets from customers about “broken features” which then acknowledged in their email that “they tried in Chrome and it worked”. One incident even acknowledged they had to use Chrome for other internal apps, but preferred to use ours in IE.

We SHOULD be pulling our support fully for it, because literally every customer has their choice of browser installed.

But users are so used to their IE they refuse to use anything else, and my boss seems to be happy accommodating that.

[some-guy]

I work at a large enterprise company for their front-end. We have noticed that US domestic IE11 usage has dropped significantly, but has remained constant in Asia. Unfortunately some of our larger customers require us to support IE11 until its official security EOL (2025).