Workarounds are never fun, but sometimes you’ve got to deal with them. That was the case with WhatsApp Web and Internet Explorer, and later on with Microsoft Edge, too. If you've been using the workarounds or a different browser to compensate, good news: WhatsApp Web now officially supports both Microsoft Edge and Internet Explorer, making setup as simple as a QR code.
At one point, Microsoft's web browser was considered to be the web browser, wresting the crown away from then forever king Netscape. Those were, however, Internet Explorer's golden days and the browser has since then become the butt of jokes in the Internet community. So it is almost fitting, but still with a heavy heart for some, that Microsoft has started 2016 by cutting off Internet Explorer versions 8, 9, and 10 from its font of continuous support and fixes. Same with Windows 8, which has also been a source of ridicule since its debut.
Bad news for those who use older versions of Microsoft Windows, good news for just about everyone else on the planet: Internet Explorer 8, 9, and 10 are finally being killed off next Tuesday. January 12th is the browsers' official "end of life" date, or when Microsoft will no longer support them with updates and security fixes. On that date, the company will be releasing a patch to encourage current users to upgrade to IE 11, which will be supported for a bit longer, or Microsoft's new Edge browser.
This week at MWC Shanhai 2015, ZTE revealed the ZTE SmartHome, a device they call their "first ever smart home gateway." This device works with wireless protocol, ZigBee, and 4G LTE connectivity for always-connected functionality. This device is set to be the center of your smart home, with an application for smartphones and tablets to control smart home devices of all sorts. In addition to a ZTE-made app for mobile devices, this device can also be controlled via web browser from Microsoft's Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, Opera, and Google Chrome.
This probably comes as a shock to no one, but Microsoft is truly putting the infamous yet still widely used Internet Explorer to rest. We all expected that when Microsoft formally acknowledged the Project Spartan web browser, but now it is making that even more formal as well as technical. While Windows 10 will still ship with both the Spartan browser and Internet Explorer 11, it will draw a hard line between the two in terms of browser engines, with Spartan exclusively using the new "Edge" engine, leaving IE to become legacy.
Internet Explorer is dead. Microsoft’s legacy browser is soon to be relegated to the trash heap, at least in name. At Microsoft’s Convergence conference yesterday, marketing boss Chris Capossela said the company was working on a new brand identity for their browser initiatives. Currently known as Spartan (which we like), Microsoft has seemingly yet to finalize the name of their new explorer of the Internet. As previously noted at their press event, the new browser will be available in Windows 10.
Microsoft almost had it good. Long lambasted for being so easily hacked, it was almost believed that the company's operating system, at least those well-patched and up to date ones, were immune to the latest security vulnerability causing worry over the Internet. As it turns out, however, it just isn't the case. Microsoft published a security advisory informing users that the version of Internet Explorer running on many versions of the Windows OS are susceptible to this FREAK attack, with no word on when a patch will be rolled out.
Over the past decade, the decline in popularity of Internet Explorer took place in a big way because of the rise of competition. The last big release of Internet Explorer was with Internet Explorer 11 for Windows 7. Internet Explorer 6 is dead, at long last, but the ill effects of this extremely buggy browser are still in full effect today. Is it time for Microsoft to ditch the brand and move on? A tip earlier today suggested that Microsoft's new browser brand may be called Spartan - another Halo brand like Cortana for a full Halo family.
Internet Explorer is hardly the most loved of browsers, and Microsoft is reportedly planning a drastic fix with a new browser codenamed Spartan tipped to launch alongside Windows 10. Intended to be more lightweight and flexible - borrowing a look and feel more akin to Google's Chrome or Mozilla's Firefox - than previous Microsoft web browsers, Spartan would stick with Microsoft's existing engine technologies under the hood, but wrap them up in such a way that the company's engineers hope users forget whatever bad experiences they may have had with legacy software such as IE6.
Supposing you’re all about sailing a pirate ship in your internet browser without having to buy Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag, today might be your day. The folks at Ubisoft have teamed with the folks responsible for keeping Internet Explorer popular have released a game called Assassin’s Creed Pirates Race, a free endeavor for the average buccaneer.
Microsoft may have walked away from Windows XP, blinking away the tears as it refuses to look back at its old OS, but some relationships are apparently too tough to quit with news of an updated patch for the deprecated platform. "Windows XP is no longer supported by Microsoft," exec Dustin C. Childs reminds us today, before going on to confirm that despite that it'll still be getting some degree of support.
Security firm FireEye has just disclosed a new zero-day vulnerability that is being used to attack more recent versions of Internet Explorer. This exploit leaves almost 25 percent of the browsers in the market quite defenseless and open to hacker attacks.
