DEV Community

IE11 Mainstream End Of Life in Oct 2020

swyx on May 13, 2020

Note: I am not a Microsoft expert/insider, these are just datapoints compiled together by an interested amateur. Greg Whitworth of the Microsoft E...
Collapse
 
jwp profile image
John Peters • Edited

Glad to see Chrome's success on the Windows Desktop! It's a great browser for development.

The fact that IE has crashed and burned couldn't have happened to a nicer company. You know the one who repeatedly, for years; threw their own adopters under the bus.

Thanks for the article Shawn.

Collapse
 
elmuerte profile image
Michiel Hendriks

You know the one who repeatedly, for years; threw their own adopters under the bus.

But Google didn't make IE 😉

Collapse
 
iankduffy profile image
Ian Duffy

I would love this to be true but unless Windows 10 now automatically comes with Edge, IE11 will need to be a fallback, we could all slowly add messages to our sites with links to firefox, chrome and edge to get people to download.

I love to drop IE11 however I have clients who still have users using it and to them that money.

Collapse
 
swyx profile image
swyx

i dont understand. Edge is the default browser... and they're shipping Chromium Edge with IE11 compatibility via Windows Update.

Collapse
 
iankduffy profile image
Ian Duffy

I might be mistaken, but when you install windows 10 you get ie11 by default, has microsoft completely changed that via an update and would that be all windows 10 users?

Thread Thread
 
swyx profile image
swyx • Edited

Its underway, but in stages. Msft rolled it out to Release Preview insiders in Feb (gadgets.ndtv.com/apps/news/microso...). The next step is Home and Pro users, planned this summer. zdnet.com/article/microsoft-kicks-... It seems this does not affect Enterprise/Education customers though :(

Collapse
 
giorgosk profile image
Giorgos Kontopoulos 👀

Freelancer here, but will wait in line to sign up that petition when it becomes available.

Collapse
 
padcom profile image
Matthias Hryniszak

Two points:

  • docs.microsoft.com/en-us/lifecycle... talks about support. Period. It's not true that the 2025 support ended a year ago.
  • not supporting IE (any version) should be the number one priority for any project.
Collapse
 
himujjal profile image
Himujjal Upadhyaya

Don't web bundlers do most of the fallback things. I mean make separate bundles for IE11. With CSS it doesn't really matter anyways. If your user is using IE11 let the user suffer the horrible ui layouts.

With JS errors, it's a concern. The app becomes unusable. This can be totally avoided using webpack or rollup.

Angular has a nice build system where it only brings up a polyfill if the first script it sent says what kind of browser it is. Now for CSR apps this is an extra http call and user ability will be slow.

For SSR you get the user agent anyways. Can serve bundles accordingly. I think optimal use of module bundlers is what can solve the big problem regarding IE11

Collapse
 
himujjal profile image
Himujjal Upadhyaya

To add to that. Android development also of suffers from the same problem. If you are building apps like Whatsapp or Facebook you have to support builds all the way to Android 4. That's horrible for a developer.

But implementing fallbacks are what defines developers top. Find the automated solution to a problem is what makes development interesting for me.

Collapse
 
rthewitt85 profile image
rthewitt85

Hey - what kind of users are "Enterprise users". Is it businesses ... or could it include schools / councils etc. I'm particularly curious to understand whether schools (who seem reluctant to upgrade) could keep IE 11 going for longer ...

Collapse
 
jamesingold profile image
James Ingold

Most people overestimate what they can do in one year and underestimate what they can do in 5 years 5 months and 2 days.