This will finally give IE a good reputation
Honestly, IE did a lot of good. Okay, maybe some good.
Since 1995, there has been no Windows machine that didn’t have a browser installed on it. This was impressive given what the Web was used for back then. Why would you need to package a browser in your operating system? Remarkably forward-thinking.
To say nothing of the random developer flailings that became backbones of modern web development like innerHTML and XMLHttpRequest.
That being said, I’ve only ever had to code for one version of IE (11), once, and only in the last few months. So I’m living a charmed life free of most of the hands-on what-the-hell-was-it-thinking-this-is-so-insane-gorrammit-microsoft.
I should spend a moment of silence in remembrance of my comrades who weren’t so lucky.
Well, just maybe I’ll switch so I won’t have to put up with Firefox’s Flash plugin crashing every ten minutes.
So, Microsoft’s new browser brand will be named after a fictional secret program where small children are kidnapped, brainwashed and bioengineered to become supersoldiers, originally to help put down insurrections against the imperialistic Unified Earth Government.
Interesting.
They haven’t decided yet whether the new name is going to be “Chromn” or “Firefax”.
Well, it ain’t gonna be Sefarri.
Yes, the re-branding trick worked wonders for Comcast, as we all saw.
All excellent points.
Also in a corporate IT environment, it provides a standard where only this browser is supported. I’ve never worked anywhere that acknowledged anything but IE on a company issued machine.
I work in infrastructure now and have for a long time, but when I used to work more with end users and stuff, that was the line and it helped diffuse things when people were like - “Firefox won’t load on my laptop”. Sucks to be you. Paraphrasing. 
Since it’s a Chromium copy I was hoping for Bling.
It seems like dystopian authoritarianism always has its roots in pragmatism. You have my sympathies, and I hope you find a nicer place to work someday.
I guess we’ll have to wait and see if there’s Laconophilia for the new browser.
I find it odd that I am actually kind of excited for the release of Windows 10. It seems so different from a Ballmer-era release, that I just can’t help but wish them well.
The headline is stupidly misleading, we’re getting a new browser, it may be good or bad, but it is not just a new label.
Also IE for all its many faults is a useful tool which is why so many corporates will flatly refuse to upgrade to a Windows that doesn’t have IE.
As a consumer with no experience of any network larger than the local Starbucks WiFi, the editor presumably is ignorant of the many ways that one may program, configure and customise IE, in ways that many other browsers like Safari and Chrome as specifically designed to prevent.
I use FireFox a lot, occasionlaly Chrome, but if I want to do something hard I use IE, so do many others, but as I say the sorts of thing we’d do is a bit more technical than reading Gmail and uploading selfies.
Of course that flexibility and power comes at a price in terms of having to use Windows, which I have to share is actually quite common in non-media industries, yes there are non-media industries, honest.
Yes, trying to maintain some semblance of a standard in an corporate IT environment is just like dystopian authoritarianism.
Should have noticed that.
I’m in the same boat, in a business where there needs to be high standards for securing client data, but instead we’re shackled to IE and shut up, that’s why.
I think that was the problem with IE. That and the years of stagnation with IE6, until Firefox became enough of a threat that Microsoft decided to finally make a new version
Much of this was hashed about back in August.
Is Internet Explorer bad just because it’s so very old and cruft-laden? In that regard a fresh start could easily prove superior to Firefox and Chrome/Webkit, which are surely destined for a similar fate. (I reckon that’s why Opera probably stopped using their own rendering engine, but maybe that was just an Apple thing.)
I’ll use it when it compiles on FreeBSD.
I’ll show myself out.
Analogy, comparison and metaphor are not identity or tautology.
But refusing to help people because of an inflexible adhesion to strict rules is a pretty common feature of authoritarian dystopias, and trying to maintain some semblance of conformance to real global interoperability standards would rarely involve IE.
I’ve worked in places with the type of policy you describe, and I’ve also worked in places that did not have such policies, and the differences between these working atmospheres are quite striking. As I said before, I hope you get the chance to see this for yourself some day.
I use IE, Firefox, and Chrome nearly every day, and Safari occasionally. I prefer firefox because I use SDC and noscript, but really I don’t care what other people use. I will help them if they need help - unless they are unpleasant towards me, in which case I will only help them if I’m paid handsomely to do so.
