Microsoft will forcibly open some websites in Edge instead of Internet Explorer

ZDNet ^ | October 26, 2020 | Catalin Cimpanu

[DoodleBob]

I don’t trust Chrome. Firefox will do the trick or others (and there is Onion if you’re paranoid).

[Fledermaus]

More of my sites don’t support IE any longer. Edge or Chrome is fine.

[Dalberg-Acton]

Yes, sir!

[montanajoe]

Thanks for the suggestion, in my younger days I played around with some of the Linux distro’s but I primarily use the new machine for my business and I have a bunch of old windows software that I've managed to get working on the Win 10 machine so I probably won't use it much for surfing the web.

Like I said I got a pretty good deal so I guess have to put up with it and use my Windows XP machine with Firefox to surf..:)

[Spirochete]

although recently I was slightly heartened to read that "the ribbon" in MS Office is finally being reversed (partially at least) back toward the same type of menu-based user interface we lost with MS Office 2003

Truly, one of their most hare-brained concepts ever. Even Microsoft Bob was a better idea.

The ribbons convept dovetails with the Windows 7 start menu "Pearl". Ribbons and Pearls - how gay. Some MS queer thought the idea was fabulous and here we are.

[Weirdad]

Of course I agree. And of course there was more than just DirectX not advancing past 9. (In vista 64 they could have gone to DX12 support if they wanted.) That lack of advancement is part of why I am only usiing Windows 10 (mainly Pro) now (and Mac and Linux), but the philosophy / interface / etc, the overall feel and flow in Vista was very good, and while it was their most advanced system it was also surprisingly good. So much sucks in 10.

One little example. Annoyance. The Windows task bar no longer lets you pin shortcuts that you can right click and get a menu just like you would on any shortcut, including “open file location” etc. Instead you get “open” and “remove” and maybe some useless pinned functions (”Jump Lists”) for that program that are hidden. If you want a separate shortcut with another commend line on the same program, you cannot do it any more, it will end up in the jumps list. Nothing was wrong with the old system, and they could have kept BOTH the old shortcut system PLUS add the new behavior, but just because many people never understood how to use their first system (whch they mnever bothers to realoy teach) they got rid of it entirely even though it is superior to the new system.

This same dumbing down is occurring all over in software, Windows, Mac, Linux even (though less), and both major phone OSs. There is less and less professional behavior left in these things, they just tear out the great stuff and have a new dumbed down less capable environment. And the old stuff that does need updated and fixed in some manner never even gets looked at.

Instead of users getting more computer literate, they have gotten WORSE in many ways.

[FreedomPoster]

Meh. It’s ok if you use Outlook Web Access. I use other browsers for normal surfing.

[Fresh Wind]

Agree totally.

I keep an old XP box around because it’s the only environment in which a piece of ancient (late 90s) software will successfully run (necessary to operate a unique, irreplaceable, and very valuable piece of test equipment). XP emulations won’t work.

That XP system will be up and running before my Win 7 box gets to the login screen.

XP has its faults, and there is the security issue, but for what I do, I don’t see any advantages to any later OS.

[daniel1212]

Like I said, if a server needs building, it’s *ONLY* going to be a Linux box. Linux is not ready for the desktop world, unless you want to use a bunch of open-source poorly-supported apps. In the normal professional content creation space, you just don’t use it. Next person that tells me to use the Gimp instead of Photoshop, or Blender instead of 3DSMAX or audacity instead of ProTools will get shot :) No one in industry uses them.

But that kind of talk can get you shot in a Linux forum!

[daniel1212]

Thanks for the suggestion, in my younger days I played around with some of the Linux distro’s but I primarily use the new machine for my business and I have a bunch of old windows software that I've managed to get working on the Win 10 machine so I probably won't use it much for surfing the web. Like I said I got a pretty good deal so I guess have to put up with it and use my Windows XP machine with Firefox to surf..:)

Well, 23 years on a W/98 PC should get you some sort of reward. Quite an upgrade even to XP. I use W/10 Pro since years ago I got an upgrade (for $29.00 at NewEgg with the rebate) from XP to W/8 on the retail channel, which offered a free upgrade to 8.1, and likewise to W/10 pro, and being on the retail meant I could migrate the OS to another (home) build, which I have done twice, thanks be to God. And with the freeware I posted then W/10 is much better for me.

[Fresh Wind]

I tried Gimp once. It was horrible.

I use Photoshop Elements. Considering that you can get older versions on eBay for practically nothing, it’s the best way to go, IMHO. It’s not for the pros, but for the average user who wants to fix photos, it’s perfect.

And you buy it. You own it. You don’t have to pay monthly ransom to keep it running.

[daniel1212]

My current browsers on this computer, in order of use are Brave Firefox Chrome IE Seamonkey (2.9.1) (not the current 2.53.4)

I use two separate installations of Firefox 52.9.0 ESR (since these allow the legacy extensions I much rely on to work, and for more secure transactions access I have two FF Quantum portable installs (you need to place a copy of the FirefoxPortable.ini from Other\Source to the main folder of FirefoxPortable and edit the FirefoxPortable.ini to AllowMultipleInstances=true DisableIntelligentStart=true), and Waterfox and Basilisk plus Chrome portable and Edge (minimal surfing). Thank God for freeware and those who make such, and options under capitalism.

[Openurmind]

Yes it DID. Not bad anymore.

[Openurmind]

A fully app loaded Mint Cinnamon is 1.8 gigs. Win 10 is 18+ gigs. You can run it on a Raspberry Pi. Somehow you were misinformed.

[Openurmind]

Still running 18.3, have been for almost 4 years now, no updates required, no problems at all. :)

[Openurmind]

It is not quite fair to use your specialized needs and personal judgement because of those specialized needs universally across the board for everyone. For the average user majority it is now absolutely fantastic, much better than Win 10.

[Dead Corpse]

Why can't Microsoft just stick with what works?

Because then they'd be Linux...

[Dead Corpse]

[Pollard]

When Linux works with games/ games development, has a decent IDE, has decent industry standard 2D and 3D content production apps and office apps ok. Right now, it’s really only for server use.

Linux is fine for a personal computer. I've been running some variant of Ubuntu for 20 years and I do more than most people on their PC. Currently running dual boot to Kubuntu or Win7 Pro and haven't booted up to the Windows side in months. About the only Win program I use is TurboCAD because it's something I learned before I started using Linux. I also have Adobe Acrobat Pro on the Win side but rarely use it.

I just did a PC update while typing this and I don't have to worry about restarting the system even if it's a major update. I can close down three browsers, Evolution email client, Inkscape and/or GIMP(graphics programs), Sublime and immediately shut down the PC and still have a 5 second shut down time. Startup time is about 15 seconds. Kubuntu runs the Plasma desktop which has as many goodies as Windows.

Libre Office is fully compatible with MS Office. OpenOffice also. I run AbiWord and Caligra Sheets and can save or open files in the same file format as MS Word, doc/docx or Excel xls/xlsx.

I agree Linux is not much good for gaming.

Plenty of IDEs but maybe not "the one that everyone uses" for a given language. I use Sublime as a text/code editor for web dev stuff. Html/CSS/php, no compiling.

For 2D graphics, there's GIMP, Krita and InkScape. InkScape's native format is svg and it will export high res png files with a very small file size so InkScape is perfect for the web. SVG is the up and coming web standard for vector graphics on the web. Right now it's png and jpg. I use GIMP for editing jpg images and ImageMagik for optimizing jpg files. GIMP will do pretty much anything Photoshop will. ImageMagik is a command line program for working with image files. It will reduce the file size of a folder full of jpg files in a matter of seconds. It's usually pre-installed on most Linux servers as well. When you upload images to facebook, twitter, imgur etc, it's usually using ImageMagik behind the scenes to optimize the image file size.

Blender has been used for 3D modeling by NASA and has been used for Spiderman 2, Captain America: The Winter Soldier and other projects. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blender_(software)#Use_in_the_media_industry It's mostly used in the early stages of large projects like that. They follow up with 3D Studio Max(think Transformers movies) and others.

Here's a French artist that uses nothing but open source software running on Kubuntu, https://www.davidrevoy.com/article783/kubuntu-linux-20-04-for-a-digital-painting-workstation-reasons-and-install-guide This is his webcomic, https://www.peppercarrot.com/en He makes his living as a graphic artist and creates the Pepper & Carrot webcomic to push for open source. He does tutorials showing how he creates the webcomic as a contribution to the open source software community.

I haven't enjoyed paying money to see the blue screen of death in 2 decades. Windows has also become yet another personal data collection machine like google, Android etc. Every PC(laptops) in the house runs dual boot Win/Ubuntu. The kids use Windows mostly because it's more compatible with web based games they play and it's what everyone else that they interact with online uses. Peer pressure. My wife usually uses Ubuntu because it's faster and more stable. She watches streaming and is on facebook for their games. Everyone where she works is on facebook and they use it for work related comms.

The biggest reason everyone uses windows is because everyone else they know uses windows, unless they're Mac users. Then they use Mac because everyone else in their field does. It's similar to how difficult it is for conservatives to start up a new social media website when everyone uses facebook or twitter. People are comfortable with what they know and want to fit in with the crowd, even if it sucks.

[Pollard]

Most of the modern Linux builds are as bloated as something you’d get from Microsoft.

Sounds like you need a newer or faster machine. I'm running Kubuntu with the Plasma desktop, one of the heftier ones, on a 7-8 year old Thinkpad W530 with an Intel i7 2.70GHz and 16GB of RAM and the system will take anything I can throw at it without getting bogged down. Three browsers with MANY tabs open, two graphics programs, an email client, file manager and Sublime text/code editor. I can quickly close them all down and still have a PC shut down time of less than 5 seconds. Updates without a restart are nice. Win10 can be 20-60 minutes or even more to update with forced restart.

My wife's old laptop is a bottom end Acer Aspire One with 1.00GHz and I haven't been able to find any flavor of Linux that will run fast on it but the Win7 Home Edition it came with only ran fast for about a year. After that MS had added so much bulk on the form of updates that it made the laptop obsolete. Unfortunately, the devs that do the lightweight versions of Linux haven't kept things up to date and the software libraries have gotten heavier. Peppermint Linux is a decent small one. One of the few that still has a 32 bit version, for now. I'm not sure if I've tried it on the Acer. Might have to do that.