Amazon ending IE11 support on Management Console and Documentation | Hacker News Reader

Amazon ending IE11 support on Management Console and Documentation

aws.amazon.com

78 pointsjeffbarr52 comments

This is only for new screens. They are still committed to fixing IE11 bugs in existing pages for another year.

That they are putting that much effort into it at all is surprising and commendable.

Not surprising to me. Tons of gigs I’ve had the corporate browser was locked to IE. mainly because of internal site compatibility. Those poor few IT folk I bet are using AWS for their “voodoo computer magic” they provide those uncaring businesses for everything technical.

edge has an IE compatibility mode, so there really is no excuse to not upgrade.

Takes knowledge, work, and capital expense.

Tech is a money pit to people that don't understand security. Never forget Sony Pictures.

Considering that IE was sunset in Nov 2019 and officially becomes abandonware next June this shouldn't be a shock. Microsoft still considers IE to be an operating system component, which suggests that they may arbitrarily remove it from user devices in forth coming security patches following June 2022.

The UI is already removed in current builds of Windows 11 but the engine remains. That's due to release this year.

Since edge has an IE mode, there is no reason to not just drop it. Internal sites can keep using compat mode and external sites automatically use the chrome based engine.

It seems odd that so much is required for basic access. Shouldn't there be some kind of mode that makes a marked up document out of everything and takes basic input?

The console is rich with features that would be impossible to do with forms and basic input.

If you want a slim, performant and functional UI to AWS, just use the CLI.

The CLI lacks discoverability and initial setup wizards. It's not good for your first exposure to an AWS service.

Not a counterpoint, but there is an AWS CLI repl/shell out there with suggestions, type-ahead, and etc. I don't use it but I've seen it and it's pretty flash.

Basic CSS layout features are missing from IE. If you want have a toolbar with some icons in it, you either have to do some hacky things with negative margins to prevent double margins on the edges or you can set "gap: 10px" on the container. Sure, the negative margins did get the job done, but at what point do you stop wasting all this time doing everything the more complex way to support a browser almost no one uses and has not been updated since 2013.

Wonder if this applies to govcloud/secret AWS too?

Each AWS partition can have its own browser support SLA. China's AWS console has its own [1], although it almost overlaps completely with the "classic" AWS console [2].

For the government/secret partition, I have no clue what their SLA is, but it wouldn't be a leap to assume they may something different.

1: https://www.amazonaws.cn/en/management-console/faqs/

2: https://aws.amazon.com/premiumsupport/knowledge-center/brows...

I appreciate that Firefox is listed before Chrome in the list of suggested browsers.

Funny that Safari wasn't mentioned.

As Safari is unavailable for Windows, there's no reason to mention it. IE11 users are Windows users, so Safari is unavailable to them.

I just had a look and can't find anything, but I'm sure that at least used not to be true?

I could've sworn when I was using Windows (primarily around XP/Vista) I had it installed. (Along with 'all' other browsers, for no apparent reason.)

https://appleinsider.com/articles/12/07/25/apple_kills_windo...

Apple ended Windows support in Safari 6.0 (2012)

I feel like I definitely had Safari on Windows after that but I believe you

I mean, you might have, it was just out of date.

It was actually bundled with the god-awful iTunes installer back then, so I am sure quite a few people had it installed unknowningly.

From an outsider's perspective: AWS has a strong anti-google-tools policy. I appreciate Chrome is listed at all ;-)

One time I tried to have a video call with someone higher up in AWS, and they were unable to join a Google Meet call we have scheduled for that meeting (and only realized at t+2m).

Why were they unable to? Is there some sort of Amazon corporate firewall that prevents access to Google services?

Probably it was some incompatibility between Google Meet and Firefox ESR.

Said it is the company policy to not use certain competitor's products, and it was neither time not place to drill down further. How it's enforced, I have no idea.

Enterprise IT usually have blacklists. Microsoft has teamviewer on the list :/

Beyond that, if you work at a company that large, they actually have to pay quite a lot to for their employees to use it.

sadly the AWS gui is horrifically slow in Firefox

Don’t think that’s Firefox. And what does it matter, really? Who cares how fast you can get to the wrong place, realize this looks not quite anything like the screen you are thinking of and have to message a coworker to see if they had bookmarked the screen you really want.

I always like that moment in a Chime meeting where some participant is having trouble with the tool and all the AWS people look embarrassed.

What’s chime?

Amazon's Chat, it's their Slack or Teams equivalent

I just realized that Ring and Chime are separate products and this wasn't about doorbells. Thanks.

Not quite - it's their Zoom equivalent. It's only used for video and voice calls. Amazon uses Slack for messaging.

Chime tried to be the internal Slack equivalent for an embarrassingly long time. Slack has only been used for a handful of months, and some (frustratingly) have not yet switched over.

At first it’s rough but it grows on you. Way more reliable than Hangouts.

Used it for an interview and was pretty disappointed in the video quality. Rather choppy and audio felt really compressed, but that might just be on the far end.

Google Meet, at least after their redesign, works really smoothly for me. We use it for our day-to-day meetings at work with non-government clients. Pre-redesign I really didn't care for Meet though.

This is every remote meeting in my experience, regardless of technology. The first 5-10 minutes or longer are spent getting everyone online, seeing and hearing each other, resolving echos and feedback, etc.

This has actually gotten better since covid I feel. Seems like people have gotten a lot more practice at joining online meetings

One of my best video conferencing purchases was a Jabra speaker/microphone that has a ring of LED's that tells me when it's muted. It's not always clear in a UI whether the mic is muted or not "The mute icon is bold white, does that mean it's muted or does that mean I need to click to mute?", but I can tell from the red LED's on my speaker, and it has a mute button on it so I always know how to mute.

And you know there's AWS people on the call, because that's the only reason you're using Chime.

Chime is one of the only video call technologies I've been completely unable to use from Firefox on Linux.

Everything else works to some reasonable degree: Zoom, Google Meet, Jitsi. Just not Chime.

Teams doesn't work reliably from Linux either

There should be some sort of global ceremony sometime soon, where ie11 is burned in effigy, torn limb from limb, buried at the stake, etc.

Then the healing can begin.

And out of the ashes creeps mobile Safari with an evil grin on its face…

I really hope Epic wins that lawsuit against Apple, not because I particularly care about Epic, but because I'd like to see Apple forced to allow alternative web browsers.

Still don't get how it was a problem for Microsoft to "bundle" Internet Explorer, but it's apparently not a problem for Apple to bundle and also actively block any installation of competing browsers.

What Apple offers is Apple's vision of how they want the products they sell to work. You might not agree with Apple, but that's fine because alternative products are available.

Whereas Microsoft was using their operating system monopoly power to mandate how other companies' products could be configured prior to sale to customers.

(This distinction is why—in my opinion—Google is in more trouble against Epic than Apple. Because unlike Apple, Google has strong leverage over how other companies' Android devices can work.)

It matters not, the web with all it’s features creates subpar UX experiences. That, or scrubs are entering frontend en masse.

when will amazon release a browser?

They do have Silk. It's a skinned Chromium, but that's par for the course these days.

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/silk/latest/developerguide/what-...

> AWS Support for Internet Explorer 11 is Ending

This title shouldn't be "AWS [admin panels and documentation] Support for Internet Explorer 11 is Ending" or something like that?

The title can create a confusion and read as "Services hosted on AWS will not support IE11" and create some freak outs.

The things of AWS that will not support AWS are:

> AWS Management Console, web-based services such as Amazon Chime or Amazon Honeycode, or other parts of the AWS web site (AWS Documentation, AWS Marketing, AWS Marketplace, or AWS Support).

Edit: I realized that I'm being this person with this comment https://xkcd.com/386/

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