Microsoft Internet Explorer Is Dead as Windows 10 Makes Way for Project Spartan

abcnews ^ | Mar 17, 2015 | ALYSSA NEWCOMB

[867V309]

The Internet Explorer brand is dead as we know it.

[GATOR NAVY]

Internet Explorer has been on every one of my PCs since the 1990’s ... I haven’t used it, but it’s been on there ...

Used at least once on each of my computers-to download another browser.

[capt. norm]

"Microsoft Internet Explorer Is Dead"

I was wondering where that smell was coming from.

[Squawk 8888]

making it almost impossible for a Windows user to use anything else

BS. I had no problem using Netscape, then Firefox, on all the corporate PCs that I administered.

[Squawk 8888]

Firefox was built from the the Netscape code; Netscape came from the Mozilla project.

[Menehune56]

They killed it on the Mac platform back in 2003.

[Squawk 8888]

If you’re developing in-house software then Apple is the wrong choice. They guard the API like the Crown Jewels and charge developers a small fortune. Windows or linux are the way to go for any custom business apps.

[Squawk 8888]

There’s another 64-bit Firefox build called Waterfox that I use, along with 64-bit Chrome. I’ve found that Waterfox is superior to Chrome for streaming media- on my older hardware, audio and video content “staggers” a lot in Chrome.

[Squawk 8888]

Two releases that use different versions of the same dll can’t tell they are using an incompatible version and the application will crash unexpectedly.

That will only happen if the app developer is sloppy. Version-checking is standard procedure when using third-party components.

[clearcarbon]

"Firefox was built from the the Netscape code; Netscape came from the Mozilla project."

FR still plays just fine on Netscape Navagator V9, though I usually run it on Opera.

[shineon]

Windows is volatile. If you treat it just right it’s great. Otherwise reboot it so all the dll’s will go back to the rock they crawled out of. All that dll stuff was created for one purpose. So people would not be able to copy an application and put it on another machine. And the registry, the ever expanding registry, that flat file heirarchical madness. All put there for one purpose, so people would not be able to copy an application from one machine and paste it to another. They made it hard to install apps on purpose. only problem, it made them just as difficult to uninstall them.

[shineon]

Did I mention it’s unbelievably poor network detection software. It reminds me of that dog on the Saturday morning cartoons.

“Which way did he go?” “Which way did he go?” So they post a message to keep you at bay. “Microsoft is detecting/repairing your network” while the machine scans your complete hard drive, looking for the word “network” on every file on your computer, who knows what it’s doing? Invariably at the end of all that waiting it says. “So sorry Uncle Albert, would you like to click this button again and do it all over?”

[samtheman]

I install windows on physical and virtual machines many hundreds of times a year. Sometimes its using a pre-existing image that already has Chrome and Firefox installed. But whenever I’m doing a fresh install of Windows, from the Windows installation media, the very first thing I do after the installation is download and install Firefox and Chrome.

[csvset]

I was getting those calls as well. They finally stopped. Despite telling them ,”I don’t use Windows”, Haji wasn’t deterred so easily.

I’d use different methods of wasting his time:

a) Playing audio from Korean, Japanese or Chinese dramas into the phone. **Click ** That’s haji hanging up.

b) Repeatedly saying the word, “haji” until he’d start cursing. **Click**

c) Cursing at him in Hindu. **Click**

d) The interwebs is confusing me. Open my window? But I’ve got the AC running. Why do I have to open a window? Where are you calling from? Do you have AC? It’s hot today, what’s your weather like? Windows? I’m not opening any windows for you, I’m on a budget. **Click**

e) Randomly use OTE (other than English) to reply to his questions. Might be Spanish, German, Italian, Korean , Chinese or Japanese. Just gibberish, anything to waste his time. **Click**

[zeugma]

IE was Microsoft's panicked foray into the browser wars back in the 1990s as Netscape was about to run away with the Internet.

People have short memories. When Microsoft finally killed off Netscape, there was a stretch of several years where nothing at all happened with IE, except for the many, many security fixes necessitated by their sloppy coding.They did everything they could to kill off Netscape, because they recognised the threat of having people have a platform-agnostic technology that helped people avoid the vendor lock-in constantly pushed by Microsoft "technologies". The many imcompatibilities they introduced into the way that IE rendered pages set back the development of internet technology by several years.

I remember seeing instances of other stupid, shortsighted development practices on their websites that would tie users to not only IE to use a particular application, but they often required a specific version of IE to work. Folks attempting to do QA testing of a website were forced to either have multiple computers, or less often multi-boot setups, so they could reboot their computers to use a specific version of IE because they were unable to run two different versions side-by-side.

The amount of time wasted dealing with anything Microsoft is staggering if you add up the cumulative effects of just their purposeful breaking of standards.

[RhoTheta]

I used Waterfox until I discovered Pale Moon. I think Pale Moon is “optimized” by removing some little-used features. At any rate, both were excellent products.