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Stop Using Internet Explorer (mashable.com)
65 points by srevo 5 hours ago | hide | past | web | favorite | 48 comments





The product we're selling is doing smartcards issuances via the browser, using an ActiveX app, so the user has to use IE. We've asked multiple time for the budget to do the change to a modern browser, but the POs has refused each time.

Another "IE required" datapoint:

I recently had to buy an Authenticode code-signing certificate. The only way to download it was to add it to the browser certificate store and export it from there. And the only browser that the vendor supported for the add-to-store operation was IE.


I will - just as soon as our Sharepoint installation properly supports other browsers.

That ain't going to happen though, is it?


It sounds like you should try to upgrade to a modern employer.

My company uses SharePoint and Chrome. What are we missing? As a light user I've not yet missed a thing.

great big list of stuff that only fully works in IE here: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/install/browser-...

Wow, that's a lot of core features. And it sort of makes sense because it's all in ActiveX, and ActiveX is not supported by Edge.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/deploy/emie-...

So an ActiveX control written in 1996 can run in Windows 10 Enterprise today via IE11. Neat... I guess.


I think you'll just need to rewrite that Sharepoint that app first.

Gonna go out on a limb here and say that anyone still using IE isn't going to be persuaded away from it by a fancy blog post.

Gonna take a wild guess that anyone reading HN probably hasn't used IE in the last decade aside from the purpose of downloading another browser

I had to use it today to connect to some old activeX iLo console for a server. Our internal HR module also only works with IE.

Guess again. It's not by choice, though.

I am gonna guess, this is not true. Some are required to use it in corporate environment.

The corporate Standard Operating Environment grinds slowly and not particularly fine.

I worked in shipping and in fact the UPS shipping software will open IE for certain pickup booking tasks. I tried to use firefox or chrome with the same URL and it didn’t work.

During work there was never time to look into it in more detail, so there might be a workaround, but the general quality (or the lack thereof) when it comes to shipping software didn’t really convince me.


You could get IETab and set it to open those sites with it.

It seems the risk is using IE for other tasks and getting exposed to malicious code, and the main reason you would open things other than the site requiring IE is that it's the browser you keep open?


yup legacy is a killer.

Some might use it to test stuff still works for their users/customers.

Can you actually delete IE from windows as the article recommends? I thought it was an integral part of the system?

You can disable IE11 under Settings -> Enable Windows Features from what I remember

Sigh... some services still require IE.

https://www.frbservices.org/fedline-solutions/service-setup/...

Not even Edge is acceptable. Then they throw in Java applets to broaden the attack surface.


I can not use the Croatian government website,[1] where one can buy a fishing licence, with anything other than IE. Despite the website insinuating that other browsers will work, if I just enable cookies (which I have!), only IE is successful.

[1] https://ribarstvo.mps.hr/default.aspx?id=5010


Shinsei bank in Japan requires IE (not edge) to use online banking. Macs aren't supported.

This seems to be the case for most banks in Japan. Also a lot of government services. Last year I ended up posting some documents to immigration because I could not get their online form to work.

Most JP banks I’ve used work fine with any browser - I use my UFJ account regularly in Safari, etc.

Shinsei is just a crap bank, and IIRC Mizuho can be a PITA depending on what you’re trying to do.


I remember, for immigration process, having to use IE to download a PDF form and install Adobe Reader to open it. Strangely enough, it also had to be opened on a desktop machine, laptops are NG.

I am able to load Shinsei in Chrome earlier this year, was this a recent change? Do you mean banking or another service?

JRE, Flash and IE... what could possibly go wrong

Try to download a code signing cert from Thawte/Digicert...

Articles like this are a dime a hundred. I'm not sure why this was even submitted, much less how it made it to the front page.

I'm assuming Edge is ok? It'd be great if the article mentioned that MS has a newer browser.

Edge is no longer a purely Microsoft product, it's now based on Chrome(Chromium) [0], or will be soon, I haven't followed this closely.

https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2018/12/06/micro...


thats not quite true. Edge BETA is the chromium based.

Edge is still wholly MS


That explains why the jquery based script I wrote to change the alpha channel of an image didn't work in Edge whereas it worked in all the other modern browsers I tested.

edit:clarity


Edge was never ok.

It reads like a hit piece to get people to switch away from Edge in case they think it's the same thing as IE. Everyone still calls it "IE", even though they're referring to Edge.

> Everyone still calls it "IE", even though they're referring to Edge.

Citation? Is this actually a thing?

Honestly I don’t believe you, mostly because your scenario involves people actually using Edge in sufficient volume that “everyone calls it IE” is supposed to be a meaningful thing.


My anecdata, everyone who I know who uses Edge (2 people, my parents on their Windows 10 machines) still call it Internet Explorer. They're tech savvy people too, but built up a habit with their new laptops. Hardly statistically significant I know though.

Changing the name of something in attempt to rebrand causes confusion.

I'm shocked.


And changing the name of something while keeping the icon/logo (almost) unchanged only adds to the confusion...

I think you just proved his point.

On a related note, I just got an email from Atlassian, that they will stop supporting IE11 sometime early 2020.

No chrome, no ie.. What is left is safari and firefox

Vivaldi, Palemoon, Brave

If you don't like any Chromium browser then Palemoon


Opera has been a great Chromium experience for me.

I see many recommending Brave. What are the benefits of it over for example Opera?


Corporate Environment / Active Directory Federations / Windows Group Policy Enforcements / SSPNEGO or Kerberos or SmartCard Login with IE.

Yeah sure, the new Edge Chromium is light years away from this


or you know... patch it :-P

the patch is out there already you know.


Stop Using Chrome Immediately



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