Microsoft officially drops support for most older versions of Internet
Explorer today. That means no more security updates for tens or hundreds
of millions of Windows users, many of whom will be blissfully unaware
that they're in danger.For Microsoft, backward compatibility is a tremendous competitive advantage. It's also a support nightmare, not just for the engineers who have to deliver patches but for third-party developers and web designers who have to support outdated code.
At one point in early 2014, thanks to Microsoft's 10-year support lifecycle for Windows, the company was actively supporting no fewer than five versions of Windows: XP, Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8, and Windows 8.1.
That assortment of operating systems also represented no fewer than six versions of Internet Explorer.
With the end of support for Windows XP in April 2014, Internet Explorer versions 6 and 7 finally fell off the official support lifecycle. But that still leaves four versions of Internet Explorer in widespread use.
Effective today, Microsoft officially ends support for all but the latest version of Internet Explorer. This certainly shouldn't come as a surprise; the company gave nearly 18 months of warning, starting in August 2014.
Today's news isn't as cut and dry as it sounds. I've already seen plenty of oversimplified headlines like these, all offering variations on the theme that Microsoft is "killing off" Internet Explorer 8, 9, and 10, leaving only IE 11 supported
The underreported part of today's news is that Microsoft is also ending support for the original, 2012 release of Windows 8, which shipped with Internet Explorer 10. Anyone running Windows 8 can upgrade to Windows 8.1 (which includes the supported Internet Explorer 11) for free. For whatever reason, though, tens of millions of people are sticking with the unpopular and now unsupported Windows 8.
HTHC Comments
We stopped using IE a long time ago. What did we replace it with?
Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome. Firefox seems to have less of a performance impact than Chrome. Chrome makes a separate process for each tab that you have opened. It can bring marginally performing computers to their knees.
We have had trouble occasionally with eCommerce sites not working with Firefox (You click submit to place your order and nothing happened.) Accessing the same site on Chrome has problem.
Chrome takes more resources from your computer, but we run Chrome for support printing to Chrome Cloud enabled printers. (Chrome Cloud enabled printers in many cases are the only solution for printing in a mixed operating system environment.
Are you trying to print from your tablet, SmartPhone or Mac computer to a printer attached to a Windows computer? We have the knowledge and the experience to create a solution that does not require buying a new printer.
