The End of Internet Explorer

Today, 15 June 2022, Microsoft retired the Internet Explorer 11 desktop application on certain versions of Windows 10, following its announcement last year. It is a milestone after almost 30 years of Internet Explorer, even though some Windows editions and IE mode remain supported. Depending on how much time you've spent in recent (or less recent) years developing for the browser that's been dragging years behind every other option on the market, you may be putting air quotes around "operation".

Sadly, Internet Explorer never managed to shake its IE6 legacy and has often been the subject of ridicule amongst developers over the years; often borne out of frustration from trying to work with it. It isn't just that it frustrated developers and designers by never quite keeping up with the latest CSS capabilities (at times, working with it felt more akin to developing an HTML email template than integrating specific browser compatibility), but it was also notoriously slow and insecure.

This was exemplified when, in early 2019, Microsoft's own Security Chief Chris Jackson called it a "compatibility solution" in a blog post that cautions against using it as a default browser and creating more technical debt for yourself.

A lot of agencies and SAAS products stopped supporting IE years ago, but for the unlucky few (particularly developers working on projects for big corporations) this day has been a long time coming. There were, as you might expect, celebrations around the internet from weathered veterans who have spent far too long debugging and retrofitting projects to work with Internet Explorer, and more than a few people feeling a little nostalgic for the browser.

I would count myself somewhere closer to the latter than the former; my career started when Netscape Navigator was still king. At the time of Internet Explorer 6's release, with its support for non‑standard filter options (something which many other browsers took years to catch up on with the introduction of CSS3), looked like a dream to work with. It's not necessarily hard to see why people who worked in the earlier tumultuous days of browser compatibility might feel nostalgic.

Internet Explorer dominated the browser market for many years, first competing with Netscape Navigator and later facing a new generation of browsers. Chrome launched in September 2008; its rise in market share came after that launch, rather than marking the browser's arrival in 2012.

That is an incredibly long run, and whilst the latter years were certainly painful from a development standpoint, IE having been such a large part of every web developer's career has definitely embedded it as a bit of a cultural touchstone online.

It's not just developers that it's caused headaches for, either. Microsoft had to deal with a court case on behalf of Internet Explorer back in the late 90s, as the browser wars between Netscape Navigator and IE raged on.

Microsoft, in their very own version of when U2 installed their new album on everybody's iPhones, had begun to pre‑install IE onto their Windows Operating System and were accused of making it difficult to uninstall, bumping up the users of their browser whilst choking Netscape Navigator out of the market. This raised more than a few eyebrows at the FTC, which launched an investigation, which was eventually picked up by the Department of Justice. In mid‑1998, they filed antitrust charges against Microsoft. In 2001, the appeals court upheld the finding that Microsoft had unlawfully maintained its operating‑system monopoly, whilst reversing or sending back other parts of the ruling and setting aside the break‑up remedy. The Department of Justice's account of the appeal explains those distinctions. Microsoft and the Department then reached a settlement in November 2001. The liability finding had not simply disappeared.

So! Farewell, Internet Explorer, the "Top Browser for Installing Other Browsers". Thank you, but also good riddance.

All of this said, Microsoft has committed to supporting IE mode in Edge through at least 2029 ‑ so the ghost of browsers past will likely still come back to haunt us all for some time yet!