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Comment by gdrulia | Hacker News Reader

In today world using any version of IE as a main browser is a bad idea. Why? Because browsers evolve very quickly and IE doesn't. It might look at first that IE is running quite nicely and even fast. But soon you start to notice all of the glitches. Especially if you're web developer. As long as there is no auto update, IE is always a threat for web developers as IE6 can happen again..

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IE10 introduced auto-update. Once 11 came out, computers silently updated to it. No big windows update prompt asking them if they're sure they want it.

IE9 to IE10 was aggressively launched as well. I believe users got a basic prompt and IE turned on auto-updating by default. According to some of my users, IE10 just appeared, so my guess is that MS may have the prompt time-out to 'yes' instead of infinitely holding the computer.

Here in corporitstan, I had to put in extra blocks to keep 10 and 11 away, due to our CRM being suck on IE9 for the time being. Trust me, MS is trying real hard to get everyone to the newest version of IE.

You see I do understand that they try and I do applaud that. yet on my windows 8 machine I still haven't received IE11, even though I just recently did got a notice that IE has been updated, it is still IE10. To make matters worse even if I visit their website to download IE11 manually [1] they're telling me that I already have IE11.

So that experience alone tells me that not everything is done right yet. And even if everything would work, they have to keep doing things right for some time to regain trust.

[1] http://windows.microsoft.com/en-gb/internet-explorer/ie-11-w...

IE11 didn't ship for Windows 8.0 it only shipped for Windows 7 and Windows 8.1.

Windows 8.1 is a free upgrade on Windows 8.0, more like a service pack release (when you look at the changes). Why not port it to Windows 8.0, it didn't make sense, 8.0 should fade out as people install the free upgrade that comes via Windows Updates (or the store, I forget which) and is a mandatory update. Opting out of mandatory updates means you opt out of associated upgrades.

This isn't a new or unique policy in Windows, look at iOS, you won't get WebGL on Mobile Safari without iOS 8, OSX doesn't back-port Safari and Andriod has a lot of versions with terrible browsers.

>even though I just recently did got a notice that IE has been updated, it is still IE10.

Win8 ships with IE10. If it did an upgrade, then you should be on 11 now.

IE11 is supported on Windows 7 and 8.1, but not Windows 8.0. So on 8.0 the auto-update feature is ineffective. According to StatCounter only 5% of 8.0 users have updated to 8.1. There must be something blocking people there, not sure what it is, but end result is the auto-updater doesn't actually auto-update everyone and fragmentation gets worse.

Why blocking IE10/11 in a corporate environment instead of simply updating it and pushing a GPO that forces IE9 mode for your CRM?

Those modes fail testing. They're not replacements for the real browser. Helps with trivial things like formatting issues, but for the handful of things I've tested that work in 9 and break in 10, the legacy modes have largely the same issues.

Because compatibility modes are imperfect.

Well, I am not a web developer - which is why I mentioned "regular web users".

Also, most of the WebGL demos around the net do not work in Firefox for me - it is possible that it is something to do with the installed drivers. However, they work perfectly work for me in IE.

I understood that. Yet you're here and you're familiar with IE6 situation. You know that while it might have looked like developers only ones who got hurt by that situation, actually everyone, including regular web users were hurt. As many hours were spent just to provide support for IE rather than creating something more useful. In other cases support for IE was dropped, which hurt users IE right away. I provided developers view, so that you could see how regular web user choice makes an impact to the whole industry.

I highly recommend FireFox, Opera or Chrome instead of IE. IE is perennially around 2 years behind (or more) every other browser (overall - in places they are on a par - and very occasionally ahead).

IE 11 is evergreen, I believe. It's auto-update. So hopefully in the future, IE 6 won't happen again, except for those enterprise customers who turn off the auto-update.

IE6 has already happened. It is called Native Client in Google Chrome.

>As long as there is no auto update, IE is always a threat for web developers as IE6 can happen again..

They have auto update for more than a couple of years now.

http://www.geek.com/news/microsoft-decides-to-automatically-...

Yes, but it doesn't work. It might be because people opt-out, they disable updates, or maybe IE is mostly used in corporate envs where people don't autoupdate anyway. I don't know WHY, but numbers show that it doesn't work.

IE11 has been released on October 2013 (8 months ago), but IE10 market share is still 6.77% today (compare with IE11 at 17.03%). I'm quoting NetMarketShare (but it doesn't really matter, all browser stats agree on this topic, with slightly different numbers).

For comparison, Chrome and Firefox versions usually go under 1% after no more than 4 months after a newer version has been released.

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