Internet Explorer Support
I tend to be more aggressive than most when it comes to ending support for outdated browsers. As I mentioned in this article about ending IE6 support 5 years ago, supporting old browsers is not worth additional cost and drag on innovation.
I am happy whenever I see a big web property end support for an old browser, but I was absolutely thrilled to see that starting on January 12th 2016, Microsoft will only support the most current version of Internet Explorer available for their supported operating systems. This means:
- IE8 and lower will be practically dead. It will only be supported on some embedded versions of Windows.
- IE9 will only be supported on Windows Vista (remember Vista?), which will lose support on April 11, 2017.
- IE10 will only be supported on older versions of Windows Server.
Even better, whenever Microsoft launches a new version of Internet Explorer, the older versions immediately lose support on mainstream desktops (and probably phones and tablets too).
Thanks Microsoft! It is a lot easier to stop supporting a browser if the software vendor behind it has also abandoned it.