Is IE8 already a legacy browser? Google thinks so.

http://jasonbos.co/ie8-a-legacy-web-browser-0

by jabo • 15 years ago

40 49 15 years ago

jasonbos.co

pohl• 15 years ago

Well, being that it only runs on a legacy OS...

Seriously, though, isn't 9 current and 10 expected soon?

jabo6• 15 years ago

IE 9 is already out there. It works on Vista and 7 only though. If only Google comes up with a way to work fully with MS's Group Policies, Chrome will most surely take over the enterprise world. I think the big enterprises which use MS technologies keep IE still going. It's not like they have a choice though.

911-inside_job3• 15 years ago

IE 6.0 is the perfect browser for the enterprise or at least the perfect stable platform for enterprise web applications.

Chrome updates are released every few days, who is supposed to test if all internal apps still work?

glhaynes• 15 years ago

Good. IE9’s failings are annoying but not nearly as annoying as IE8's.

dstein• 15 years ago

Considering IE9 is one whole generation behind the other browsers, it too should be considered a legacy browser.

etaty• 15 years ago

Douglas Crockford said : "I have good hope for IE10, but all previous IE should die".

yuhong5• 15 years ago

>Considering IE9 is one whole generation behind the other browsers

Now consider how bad IE8 must be. It doesn't support some 10 years old standards, such as XHTML.

viraptor• 15 years ago

Isn't XHTML pretty much a dead end now? Since everyone went for HTML5 support, you can still make XML-compliant HTML5 pages and serving XHTML-compliant pages is a tricky business - is there any reason for IE to support it?

jabo6• 15 years ago

Let's see if Google updates their documentation page soon to include IE9 in the list :)

jabo6• 15 years ago

One thing that surprises me is how when MS comes up with non-standard technologies for IE it makes them look like the bad guys, but when Google comes up with non-standard stuff (aka bleeding edge innovation) everyone embraces it. Imagine Microsoft launching something like the IE App Store.

yuhong5• 15 years ago

Yea, I realized that embrace and extend is not the worst of MS's evils. For example, MS extending ODF would have been much better than what MS did with OOXML.

yid• 15 years ago

IE's worst sins were MS-only extensions for which standards already existed. Goog, on the other hand, at least aims for backwards compatibility and standards compliance (see SPDY and false start SSL handshakes)

code_duck6• 15 years ago

Compared to the latest browsers from everyone else, yes.

Unfortunately, Microsoft's style seems to be to release browsers that are obsolete before they're even available. IE9 is a nice step ahead, but it leaves out a lot of nice technologies that could have moved the web forward. As Mozilla shifts to faster releases, and Chrome, Safari and webkit in general steam ahead, it's sad to think that we won't see IE 10 for another couple of years at the soonest.

The way IE is developed is a relic of the desktop software era. Mozilla recognized that to keep up with Google, they needed to change how their browser is developed and released - I pray that something vital is changed to make that possible for MS and IE as well.

Meai• 15 years ago

There are already previews of ie10 floating around, and it was shown on mix'11. I think it's going to be released with Windows 8

code_duck6• 15 years ago

Which will be released in... 18 to 24 months? Will the adoption rate of IE 9 even be 25% of IE users by then?

Silhouette11• 15 years ago

> Unfortunately, Microsoft's style seems to be to release browsers that are obsolete before they're even available.

I still don't understand why people think this crazy rush to get new browser versions out as rapidly as every couple of months is a good thing.

Even if browsers support new features that fast, full-time professional web development agencies aren't going to keep up with the developments at the same break-neck pace, never mind anyone else. Even if they did, I doubt many of them would risk their reputation designing live sites for serious clients using unproven novelty technologies.

While Microsoft's release cycle is perhaps longer than I would choose, at least they have some stability as a result. We may have hated IE6, but we did so only after several years of it being clearly the best browser in town, which people often forget. In any case, at least its quirks and foibles were well understood, and workarounds were widely documented and used basically successfully. Ditto for IE7, and anything from IE8 onwards is pretty decent as far as web standards go. For all the anti-IE criticism, the Web developed from a novelty to a routine part of daily life on Microsoft's watch, and about half the people in the world still use IE to get stuff done, despite all the possible alternatives available to them.

Right now, with these absurdly rapid release cycles, it just feels like Google and Mozilla are having a big game of mine's bigger than yours is. I'd rather they stopped breaking actually useful stuff in releases they are pushing to the browsing public: Google have broken everything from rounded corners to HTML5 video, while Mozilla have fundamentally stuffed tried and tested tech like Java applets and basic typography by trying to be too clever with new technologies in recent versions. I'd rather the Chrome and Firefox teams caught up with basics that most people actually care about: Firefox 4 still doesn't do sensible tab isolation years after IE and Chrome did, while Chrome still doesn't seem to have an ad blocker worth anything, for example.

Meanwhile, I really don't care that they can hide the URL bar now; I have a 1920x1200 screen and I like to know what site I'm really visiting. I don't care that Google support "open" video formats like VP8; the serious video publishing world uses the technically superior H.264, and Google just removed support for that in Chrome for purely political reasons.

Please note that none of this means they can't issue security or performance updates as necessary. But Microsoft do that too, they just don't feel the need to slap a big "this is a shiny new version!" sticker on it every time.

> The way IE is developed is a relic of the desktop software era.

Contrary to trendy opinion among bazillionaire wannabes on Hacker News, the vast, vast majority of the world's IT infrastructure still lives in the desktop software era, and most web-based or mobile-based software sucks on technical, usability and basic functionality grounds. And I write that as someone who makes his living working with those technologies, just trying not to suck at it quite as badly.

code_duck6• 15 years ago

Interesting perspectives. Let's see.

>I still don't understand why people think this crazy rush to get new browser versions out as rapidly as every couple of months is a good thing.

Because the alternative system involves way too much pain in upgrading for users, apparently. Three monolithic releases in an entire decade is a better plan, you think? The technologies involved with the web move too quickly to still be thinking about IE 6 and IE 7 in 2011.

>While Microsoft's release cycle is perhaps longer than I would choose, at least they have some stability as a result. We may have hated IE6, but we did so only after several years of it being clearly the best browser in town, which people often forget. In any case, at least its quirks and foibles were well understood, and workarounds were widely documented and used basically successfully. Ditto for IE7, and anything from IE8 onwards is pretty decent as far as web standards go.

All I can assume from that statement is that you're not a javascript or CSS developer. IE 6 was the best because Netscape had their 'air supply cut off' and was not really in the game in 2001. IE 6 and 7 continue to cause problems for me, personally, and if I was the only one, we would not be having this discussion.

>For all the anti-IE criticism, the Web developed from a novelty to a routine part of daily life on Microsoft's watch, and about half the people in the world still use IE to get stuff done, despite all the possible alternatives available to them.

Yes, after MS beat down the company who pioneered bringing browser technology to the masses, the web grew while IE was the most popular browser. Yes, about half of the world uses IE - mainly people who don't understand what a browser is, and click the big E on their desktop. Including software with other software that has monopoly level market saturation is successful, can you believe it?

> I'd rather the Chrome and Firefox teams caught up with basics that most people actually care about: Firefox 4 still doesn't do sensible tab isolation years after IE and Chrome did, while Chrome still doesn't seem to have an ad blocker worth anything, for example.

IE doesn't even have a spell check, much less an ad blocker. How about Web GL? If I recall from the Reddit threads from the IE team, Microsoft insists they can't put IE9 on XP mainly due to hardware acceleration. For 2D only?

>Please note that none of this means they can't issue security or performance updates as necessary. But Microsoft do that too, they just don't feel the need to slap a big "this is a shiny new version!" sticker on it every time.

How many significant updates to IE 8 have there been? How often was Chrome or Firefox improved during that time, noticeably? Waiting until MS releases a new version of Windows and everyone buys a new computer in order to run it has left web developers with a lot of problems.

>the vast, vast majority of the world's IT infrastructure still lives in the desktop software era, and most web-based or mobile-based software sucks on technical, usability and basic functionality grounds.

Some people are still using DOS, but that's not really the point. I expect at some point, the enterprises who haven't already figured it out will realize that developing or purchasing inflexible, monolithic software that is upgraded with great pain and expense every five years is not ideal. Hundreds of millions of people are using internet based software (and I'm not talking about Google Apps - I mean applications such as this site) each day, and they work. Meanwhile, I can't open an IT magazine without seeing the word 'cloud' 8,000 times, so... we'll see what happens to the world of desktop software, hmm?

IE is a deplorable web browser in the opinion of the vast majority of web developers I've ever encountered. it's the only one that you have to fire up virtual machines to test on three or four different versions even when using Windows. The development models of webkit and Mozilla have resulted in far superior software, and that's really all one can say. It's time for MS to either get serious about releasing a top quality browser, or go away.

robryan• 15 years ago

From a developer standpoint it feels like IE8 is closer to IE7 than the modern browsers, still needs hacks plenty of hacks.

mickeyben2• 15 years ago

Do you know some big websites using the Google Chrome Frame in production ?

If you're using it, any experience to share ?

jabo6• 15 years ago

Using Chrome Frame is just a matter of adding "<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=Edge,chrome=1">" to a page. I haven't used it yet, but the Chrome team recently announced at Google I/O that users can install Chrome Frame without the need for admin rights. Given that Google is taking an effort to promote Chrome Frame and making it accessible to several users restricted by corporate IT policies, there should be more adopters soon.

mickeyben2• 15 years ago

I know it's very simple (I read the docs) but looking at the project bug tracker it looks like there is bugs here and there [1].

Just asking if it works well.

[1] http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/list?can=2&q=la...

Silhouette11• 15 years ago

Google are actively encouraging people to circumvent corporate IT policies?! No wonder so many corporate IT departments are sticking by Microsoft: at least they make it reasonably straightforward for sysadmins to manage policies across a whole workplace.

I hadn't heard of Chrome Frame until this discussion, but the basic suggestions at http://code.google.com/chrome/chromeframe/ sound a lot like "This page best viewed in $BROWSER at $RESOLUTION". Didn't we learn that lesson yet?

Ruudjah• 15 years ago

IE8 does not do html5. Therefore, it's a legacy browser. Makes perfect sense to me.

asadotzler• 15 years ago

Modern browsers share several things in common. If you're not a modern browser, then you're a legacy browser.

Modern browsers have most of these:

Super-fast JavaScript engines Hardware acceleration for graphics and text HTML audio and video elements and APIs SVG for vector graphics ForeignObject for bringing HTML into SVG HTML canvas element and API for 2D Some useful CSS 3 support like border radius, text shadow, transforms and transitions, etc. HTML History API WebGL for 3D graphics Web Workers Application Cache

These are the features that let Web developers build a richer caliber of Web applications. IE 9 is a little bit short on some of these items, but I think it's got enough to qualify it as being part of the gang of Modern browsers.

IE 8 has none of this. IE 8 was really not much more than IE7 with improved CSS 2.1 support, and IE7 wasn't much more than IE6 with tabbed browsing.

So, yes, IE 8 is a legacy browser. It's the new IE6 -- the boat anchor around the necks of Web developers who want to move the Web forward.

Even worse, Microsoft is leaving behind hundreds of millions of users who are currently running IE 7 and 8, saying that IE8 is the end of the road for Windows XP. It's pretty clear that Microsoft is making the big break with legacy between IE8 and IE9. 8 is the past, 9 is the present.

yuhong5• 15 years ago

>IE 8 has none of this. IE 8 was really not much more than IE7 with improved CSS 2.1 support, and IE7 wasn't much more than IE6 with tabbed browsing.

AFAIK from the bugs IE8's CSS code seems like a rewrite, while IE7's CSS code seems like hacks on top of IE6's CSS code.

Silhouette11• 15 years ago

> Modern browsers have most of these:

Well, modern browsers have some form of most of those, often different to the form in any other modern browser.

HTML5 video is a great example. It's a nice idea, but as long as everyone is having childish arguments over which formats they're going to support, many of us who have to produce real world applications for real world users are still going to use Flash. (Sorry, Apple.)

If and when the sorts of features you described are standardised such that web developers can write one version of their code and have a fair chance of it running on all modern browsers, then you'll have a case. Until then, I'm afraid it's just your personal, and inevitably biased, wish list.

> These are the features that let Web developers build a richer caliber of Web applications.

Can you give us some examples?

> IE 8 has none of this. IE 8 was really not much more than IE7 with improved CSS 2.1 support, and IE7 wasn't much more than IE6 with tabbed browsing.

Writing silly things like that makes you look rather foolish. For example, you've just defined "super-fast JavaScript engines" as a necessary criteria for a modern browser, and then immediately glossed over orders-of-magnitude improvements in real world JS performance between successive versions of IE. Of course faster JS engines are never going to do any harm, other things being equal, but IE8 runs JS fast enough to be useful.

jabo6• 15 years ago

Silhouette and 911-inside_job: You guys should really read this: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2575632

Is IE8 already a legacy browser? Google thinks so.

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