MS IE warning

[CoffeeCake]

1 hour ago, Runar said:

Can I ask why you use IE 11, with so many options available? Or are you somehow forced to use this old and outdated browser?

Very often, these folks are at the mercy of their IT infrastructure requirements. Large (and small) enterprises have dependencies on IE for mission critical applications and IT departments will lock them into using dated browsers because the things they need to work were coded to work in IE.

If you have a large number of members in certain industries browsing from their workplace, you'll find that many have no choice in the matter and your community not working may mean they go elsewhere.

[Runar]

1 hour ago, Paul E. said:

Very often, these folks are at the mercy of their IT infrastructure requirements. Large (and small) enterprises have dependencies on IE for mission critical applications and IT departments will lock them into using dated browsers because the things they need to work were coded to work in IE.

If you have a large number of members in certain industries browsing from their workplace, you'll find that many have no choice in the matter and your community not working may mean they go elsewhere.

You are absolutely correct and I'm very familiar with this scenario as I was locked into using IE 11 myself until recently. I must also admit that I sometimes browse both this community and my own from my workplace.

However, @Chris89 made it sound as if he uses IE 11 privately as well, and that I can't understand. Why would anyone do themselves that kind of harm? It pains me every time I have to open IE 11, and I can't imagine using it as my daily browser.

[Chris89]

You’re correct, I do use it for browsing privately. I like it personally, I never really understood what all the fuss was about.

The simple fact is that I feel it resonates with me in a way that I just don’t with other browsers, I just don’t like them, particularly Chrome which I think is awful.

I don’t mind Safari on my iPhone, I do kind of like that, but not on a desktop computer.

[Runar]

56 minutes ago, Chris89 said:

You’re correct, I do use it for browsing privately. I like it personally, I never really understood what all the fuss was about.

Most of the fuss comes from the fact that it's an old browser lacking support for many new web technologies being put to use. It's almost comparable to not understanding the fuss about DVDs or Blu-rays, and insisting on using VHS cassettes: It might work for you, but soon you'll not be able to purchase new cassettes (or visit your favourite websites) as the production costs exceeds the revenue.

Edited September 7, 2020 by Runar

[CoffeeCake]

4 hours ago, Chris89 said:

You’re correct, I do use it for browsing privately. I like it personally, I never really understood what all the fuss was about.

The simple fact is that I feel it resonates with me in a way that I just don’t with other browsers, I just don’t like them, particularly Chrome which I think is awful.

[Rikki]

Even Microsoft will not support IE11 (or legacy Edge) in any way from next year, including in its own products like Teams. Other major sites like Twitter are starting to drop any support too. It won't be long until you'll struggle to use the web on IE11. Technically we have not supported it for a long time, but because we held back on modern CSS features, it still mostly worked. For 4.5, we decided now was the time to press ahead with improvements and drop support ourselves.

By dropping support, we've been able to use newer CSS features that benefit designers (and therefore site owners), simplify our theme (with more improvements to come), and we'll also be able to begin the process of modernizing our javascript.

If your community has a significant percentage of IE11 users due to your audience, you may prefer to stay on 4.4 (though that, understandably, has drawbacks too). If you're just an individual IE11 user, I would strongly suggest using a newer browser - literally any of them would be a better choice. 

[TDBF]

23 hours ago, Paul E. said:

Very often, these folks are at the mercy of their IT infrastructure requirements. Large (and small) enterprises have dependencies on IE for mission critical applications and IT departments will lock them into using dated browsers because the things they need to work were coded to work in IE.

If you have a large number of members in certain industries browsing from their workplace, you'll find that many have no choice in the matter and your community not working may mean they go elsewhere.

Sorry, but this has been known for a long time, and it is up to those companies to stay up to date with more secure and stable software which follow the industry standards.

I did a lot of development in the last decade and during the whole IE v6 fiasco, and that browser alone held back web development for many years, all because Microsoft refused to updated it. They had the numbers back then, and lost out to Firefox and the Google in the end and rightly so.

I got to a point were I said enough was enough and point blank refused to develop for that browser, even after a lot of complaints from users of my software.

As far as I am concerned, the quicker IE dies out, the better it will be for the web industry and if people still use it, then they only have themselves to blame. Update or die.

[TDBF]

21 hours ago, Chris89 said:

You’re correct, I do use it for browsing privately. I like it personally, I never really understood what all the fuss was about.

The simple fact is that I feel it resonates with me in a way that I just don’t with other browsers, I just don’t like them, particularly Chrome which I think is awful.

I don’t mind Safari on my iPhone, I do kind of like that, but not on a desktop computer.

How old is your car, phone, computer or TV? I bet for a fact that they're are all newer than the browser you are using.

So would you use your phone from 2010 to do what you are doing on your phone now?

[Charles]

Aren't people who use IE11 used to most of the Internet not working correctly? I mean it's not like it's just us who have said no more to 2003 😉

Or maybe they don't realize most things either do not work right or are otherwise not 100% on IE11? Either way: we are moving forward not looking back and it's not really our responsibility to "warn" people that they are out of date.

[DesignzShop]

29 minutes ago, TDBF said:

How old is your car

That's a bad analogy right there...  😁
 

Edited September 8, 2020 by DesignzShop

[TDBF]

3 minutes ago, DesignzShop said:

That's a bad analogy right there...
 

There's a difference here though, one is a collectors item and the other is a penis extension.

I am talking about a car for every day usage here. 😛

Edited September 8, 2020 by TDBF

[CoffeeCake]

IE is a terrible thing that needs to die. However, if your members primarily interact with your site from places where IE is prevalent (look at your analytics to see what the impact is for you), then this becomes a problem for your site. IE 11 is maintained. The issue is not stability or security, but rather standards compliance. 0.33% of members on our community use IE, and that's a percentage we're okay with not supporting.

IPS (I assume) has a wide variety of customers serving a wide variety of industries, and I would not be surprised if some portion of their customers cater to building a community that is used heavily by IE 11 users. Most of these users are probably not like @Chris89, but instead are prisoners of the enterprise they're employed by, and the blue "e" icon is their only way online.

4 hours ago, Rikki said:

If your community has a significant percentage of IE11 users due to your audience, you may prefer to stay on 4.4 (though that, understandably, has drawbacks too). If you're just an individual IE11 user, I would strongly suggest using a newer browser - literally any of them would be a better choice. 

This right here. Or, probably a better approach long term would be developing/purchasing a custom theme on 4.5 that works well with IE. I think this was a surprise to the thread starter, and may be an indicator that the way potentially impacting changes are communicated when announcing the availability of an update could be reviewed. 

[DesignzShop]

10 minutes ago, TDBF said:

There's a difference here though, one is a collectors item and the other is a penis extension.

I am talking about a car for every day usage here. 😛

Well, I'm not sure about a penis extension after having 3 kids and being married over 30 years but... I probably should of had some cut off 😄 

The Mustang is my everyday driver young man ... or is it young lady? Just to cover all my bases here 😄 

Edited September 8, 2020 by DesignzShop

[Rikki]

2 minutes ago, Paul E. said:

I think this was a surprise to the thread starter, and may be an indicator that the way potentially impacting changes are communicated when announcing the availability of an update could be reviewed.

Just to note, we did list this change in the deprecation section for 4.5. We always recommend reviewing the release notes, especially for major releases.

[DesignzShop]

1 minute ago, Rikki said:

Just to note, we did list this change in the deprecation section for 4.5. We always recommend reviewing the release notes, especially for major releases.

It's all good Rikki imo... Some people will be late to their own funeral..

[CoffeeCake]

Just now, Rikki said:

Just to note, we did list this change in the deprecation section for 4.5. We always recommend reviewing the release notes, especially for major releases.

Yes, of course. That's where I read about it. But whatever appears in the ACP for the folks who don't follow along here doesn't seem to be doing enough of a job of saying "HOL UP! Go learn about this and consider carefully before deciding to press that upgrade button."

It's a pretty upgrade button that looks the same as all the other upgrade buttons and I think some folks are getting click happy, thinking it's a minor change when it's anything but.

[TDBF]

 

3 minutes ago, Rikki said:

Just to note, we did list this change in the deprecation section for 4.5. We always recommend reviewing the release notes, especially for major releases.

I have had a few people who use IPads IOS 9.3.5 or < who have told me that they cannot view the forum now because it is broken and unworkable. Hard to tell them that they need to upgrade their hardware as they cannot update to newer apps.

[TDBF]

2 minutes ago, Paul E. said:

Yes, of course. That's where I read about it. But whatever appears in the ACP for the folks who don't follow along here doesn't seem to be doing enough of a job of saying "HOL UP! Go learn about this and consider carefully before deciding to press that upgrade button."

It's a pretty upgrade button that looks the same as all the other upgrade buttons and I think some folks are getting click happy, thinking it's a minor change when it's anything but.

Sorry Paul, but it has been well hammered on in this forum that 4.5 was a massive update, and it would break a lot of applications, plugins, themes and forums.

My forum is heavily modified with custom Themes, Pages, Applications and Plugins, and I knew full well what I would be getting myself into before I started. I even told my forum members a couple of months back, that when we started the updates there would be some disruption to the forum.

I update, because I have seen first hand what happens to a site and software when they are not updated. My brother co-hosted a pretty large Unix site which was built on v-Bulletin. The software wasn't updated past version 3. They had a ton loads of custom code written over a period of 10 years, and when they finally decided to update, they either had to start again or upgrade all their code to work on the newer version. I offered to give them a hand, but once I saw the state of the code, I decided against it.

[Woodsman]

Bottom line IE any version has come to EOL. END OF LIFE.

[CoffeeCake]

20 minutes ago, TDBF said:

Sorry Paul, but it has been well hammered on in this forum that 4.5 was a massive update, and it would break a lot of applications, plugins, themes and forums.

Not disagreeing with you at all. You and I and many of us have kept abreast of changes here. Heck, we look at changes in the actual source before even putting it on our test site. Every change documented from 4.4.10 to 4.5.<today> is merged into a single release note, with no way to see what has changed between point releases. Changes to oauth graphql server token revocation from 4.5.1 to 4.5.2? Completely undocumented:

Some administrators are just running their sites and installing updates as they become available. It seems that some customers don't come here and get educated about what's new before pressing the upgrade button in the ACP. While I'm sure these administrators could do a bit more due diligence and be a bit more careful about things, I think it would be a good benefit for those folks to see improvements in alerting administrators with the sorts of things they should consider prior to upgrading.

There have been people coming here and expressing surprise in peer-to-peer support threads that things stopped working. I think it's good if we talk about ways to help those types of administrators understand impacts before they get to that point.

None of this to say that IPS is doing a poor job. Instead, sharing to help us think about ways to do that good job they do even better. In the end, it helps us all.

Edited September 8, 2020 by Paul E.
Missed a word.

[Morgin]

2 hours ago, TDBF said:

 

I have had a few people who use IPads IOS 9.3.5 or < who have told me that they cannot view the forum now because it is broken and unworkable. Hard to tell them that they need to upgrade their hardware as they cannot update to newer apps.

This means they are on an OG iPad, ipad2, iPad 3rd gen, or iPad mini 1. Basically, hardware released at latest in 2012 (and possibly earlier) where Apple only supports up to iOS 9. iOS 9 has been out of security support for a few years now  

This also means the hardware is at least 8 years old. That’s a long time for mobile/tablet device compatibility, especially given how much changed over the last decade.

Can’t support everything forever. For the software to improve, it’s gotta look ahead. I’m sympathetic given how expensive it is to update what otherwise “works”, but also selfishly glad they are not burdening this software with legacies from the past. 

And as @Charles alluded to, someone on iOS 9 is gonna find 90% of the web unusable, not just IPS. 

[TDBF]

1 hour ago, Morgin said:

This means they are on an OG iPad, ipad2, iPad 3rd gen, or iPad mini 1. Basically, hardware released at latest in 2012 (and possibly earlier) where Apple only supports up to iOS 9. iOS 9 has been out of security support for a few years now  

This also means the hardware is at least 8 years old. That’s a long time for mobile/tablet device compatibility, especially given how much changed over the last decade.

Can’t support everything forever. For the software to improve, it’s gotta look ahead. I’m sympathetic given how expensive it is to update what otherwise “works”, but also selfishly glad they are not burdening this software with legacies from the past. 

And as @Charles alluded to, someone on iOS 9 is gonna find 90% of the web unusable, not just IPS. 

I already new this, and was just looking for confirmation in case this might have not been the case.

Some members are not too happy as they only vist the site using their outdated IPad's and trying to explain to them why the forum worked one day and not the next, does gets old after a while..... But what you expect with football fans 😂

Edited September 8, 2020 by TDBF

[Malwarebytes Forums]

On 9/8/2020 at 10:34 AM, Paul E. said:

Some administrators are just running their sites and installing updates as they become available. It seems that some customers don't come here and get educated about what's new before pressing the upgrade button in the ACP.

Agreed, but one has to also realize that not every customer has time and resources to spend "educating" ones self on all the changes and what they really mean. Trying to run a business alone is time consuming enough. Having strong bold top 5 or top 3 things that "might" bite you on an upgrade should be included with the banner to update. There had to be over a 100 fixes, changes in just the 4.5.2 recent update from the 4.5.1 update last week. If you're not a web developer, who has that sort of time to review and both decide or know if it will negatively affect their site or not?

If you've had a previous site exploited because you didn't upgrade when there was a security fix out then that too will prompt people to want to keep up to date quickly as well regardless of what other changes may be in store for them.

 

 

[Matt]

Excellent points raised here. We'll do better at warning of the bigger changes during development and in the release notes.

[Adam.M]

I may not be in the right thread, but my users on MS Edge are getting a red warning "do not continue" notice when visiting my forums (4.5).

I'm guilty of not reading all the fine print... and I agree that Windows Exploder needs to die. Yesterday, or sooner.

But in the meantime... is there a fix, a workaround, anything I can do to not lose all those people?