With Windows 11 just having been unveiled, there’s quite a few tidbits to go through – news that has come out after the actual event. First, Windows 11 will spell the official end of Internet Explorer shipping as part of Windows.
At one point in Windows 10’s lifetime, you could have had Internet Explorer, the legacy version of Microsoft Edge, and the new Chromium-powered Edge all installed. This trio of browsers was the perfect illustration of Microsoft’s struggles with the web over the past decade, but now that Internet Explorer is being laid to rest in 2022, it’s disappearing from Windows 11, too.
About time.
How the mighty have fallen. IE used to have 95% market share and trying to get websites to support other browsers was an impossible mission. Thankfully browsing from mobile devices saved the web, as site builders were practically forced to build for standards rather than for IE.
IE 11 was last updated in October 17, 2013 with version 11. It hasn’t been updated now for 8 years. Have you been living under a rock?
And even back then the browsers shares already were: Chrome/IE/Firefox: 45.40%/26.50%/21.31% according to StatCounter.
I guess you are too young to experience the web when IE had total market share domination. I was reflecting on that era and what ended it. Do you have anything interesting to say about this observation?
It was around 2003 when Explorer had 95% of the browser share, so probably before Artem was born!
You just cannot not insult right? I’ve used PCs since Intel 8086 if you know what that even means.
Again, I don’t understand the reason to whine and complain. IE has been dead for close to a decade already (IE 11 barely differed from IE10). Let’s talk about slavery or Hitler as well if you love history so much.
He wasn’t complaining, honey. He was reminiscing. You got the wrong end of the stick.
They stopped updating IE in 2001 too, it had >95% market share so they disbanded the development team and just let it stagnate. It wasn’t until firefox started seriously eating into their market share that they started trying to update it.
The move to standardization started some years before the rise of the mobile web. It was around the time Firefox started gaining traction as an IE6 alternative. It happened around 2005 if I remember correctly.
Before then, you would see Firefox randomly spitting out random characters in text mode for certain websites, and the occasional website requiring ActiveX to work (no, I am not talking about ads trying to download junk into your computer, I mean the website was designed to use ActiveX).
When people complain about how bad things are now, I remind them that there is an alternative future where ActiveX hit it big and every browser has to implement OLE and COM, essentially playing eternal catch-up with Windows just to render webpages correctly, in the same manner Wine does for native apps. Fortunately, Microsoft dropped the ball big with IE6 and that never happened. People really wanted tabs and a safer browser (that could also be updated independently of Windows Update) and were wiling to give Firefox a chance (myself included). And that gave Firefox an opportunity. Well, that an Google’s financial sponsorship.
IE’s MSHTML will remain for as long as Win32 APIs are there. Microsoft is simply removing the app to launch it as a complete webbrowser.
Hackers will probably find a way to copy iexplore.exe from Windows 10 to Windows 11 and run it regardless.
Also, the new MS Edge will continue to support IE mode.
This, again. The original IE codebase will stay as “IE mode”, due to the number of internal corporate applications relying on IE’s integration with win32 components (OLE and COM), better known as “ActiveX”. But I am glad you cannot launch IE as a standalone browser anymore, even by accident.
With modern browsers adding so many security “features” to prevent idiots from getting their details stolen, it’s actually quite useful for a brain-dead browser to be available. I’ve found myself using IE several times, just because Google Chrome or Edge think i’m a moron and shouldn’t proceed to that site.
Thom, please don’t let prissy Americans get in the way of proper tit-bits. ‘Tidbits’ is a comically puritan Americanism invented to spare the blushes of people who really ought not have their blushes spared.
OK, now you can delete my message as off topic. Sorry.