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Comment by skrebbel | Hacker News Reader

So the objection is that Internet Explorer has msn.com as its default homepage. This is fair, it's ridiculous and a relic from a long gone age.

But so is Internet Explorer. What kind of super old Windows version were these people running? What caused IE to open out of the blue? Windows has plenty flaws but randomly open browsers is not one I'm familiar with.

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I've seen IE launch itself at times after a reboot. When the OS updates & reboots, a lot of apps take this opportunity to update themselves, or maybe its the default behavior on system boot, who knows. After the update they decide to send you to their website - but they fuck up the API call and so IE just shows the default homepage.

But why IE? Why not Edge? IE hasn't been the default browser for years.

And iirc Edge shows some shitty news feed "new tab" screen (without ads). It's still crap, but less crap than msn.com :-)

After updating to any of the semi-annual releases in the past few years, Edge is what brings up a page to tell you that your computer updated. I think they're just using it as a glorified and guaranteed installed safe to run HTML viewer.

IE does not start up automatically.

The kind of app that fucks up the API call is probably also the kind that hardcodes IE.

I suspect it actually was Edge and the OP didn't realize

It was IE. I'd have to hand my nerd card in if I couldn't tell the difference :P

They probably did some hacky shit like

CreateObject("WScript.Shell").Run "cmd /k C:\Progra~1\Intern~1\iexplore.exe" & Blah

and then forgot to set Blah, or it used to be set but somehow got unset in a later update script, etc.

And the admin had hand-configured msn.com as the Edge start page?

IE still ships in Win 10, even though Edge is the default.

Yes, it sucks, but there are tons of archaic corporate programs and government sites that require it. Some oddly coded old programs will still launch IE if you click links in their About windows (probably hardcoded to launch IE instead of using the system's default url handler).

The comment on randomly opening windows is fair (I don't see what caused it either), but this was a build VM, not a workstation - there is no reason to upgrade the browser. A more pertinent question is why are MS still shipping IE by default.

It was a "build VM" running the client edition of Windows. Do you install Ubuntu Desktop on your build VMs and expect Firefox not to be bundled?

IE was superceded by Edge a long time ago. I'm not arguing for a different choice of browser, I'm arguing for them not to ship deprecated browsers.

TBF it costs licensing money, like twice as much. Yes, I know, it could be chalked up as cost of doing business, I’m just saying it’s a different question than just choosing between free linux distros for a VM.

Agreed, I'm not saying that everyone needs to be using Windows Server for every build task, I'm just saying that it's silly to complain about Windows client being engineered for clients by default. If you're knowingly going to take that cost-cutting measure then you ought to accept that the default config will have to be tuned for your use case.

A lot of enterprise software from Oracle still requires Java 6 and a J2SE plug-in, which only run in IE for whatever reason.

> which only run in IE for whatever reason.

Java Applets (and Flash) were built on the NPAPI APIs (as "plug-ins"). Historically NPAPI was supported by every major browser.

NPAPI/Plug-ins are insecure/cannot be sandboxed. After Flash died, browsers quickly dropped NPAPI support (namely Opera 2016, Chrome in 2015, Firefox in 2017, Safari in 2018, etc) and Edge never supported it.

Internet Explorer is the only browser with a large install-base that still supports native plugins and by extension Java Applet. It is essentially Microsoft's "compatibility" browser, a safe haven for the last remaining ActiveX/NPAPI Plug-ins/Flash/Java Applets/etc.

Extensions by contrast are much more secure, as they run completely in a browser's context and can be isolated/sandbox/have permissions, but aren't suitable for running a full speed virtual machine (although Web Assembly could change that) like Java or Flash.

> Internet Explorer is the only browser with a large install-base that still supports NPAPI and by extension Java Applet.

I though plugins on Internet Explorer used ActiveX, not NPAPI. Wikipedia agrees with me (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NPAPI): "Internet Explorer versions 3 through 5.5 SP2 supported NPAPI [...] Support came via a small ActiveX control (named "plugin.ocx") that acted as a shim [...] Microsoft dropped support in version 5.5 SP2 onwards for security reasons."

Changed one word to resolve.

Right? Is it so hard to change the default homepage / new tab page to do nothing?

The default settings for IE are for the masses - they want to see a search bar / news site as soon as they open the web browser. If the browser did nothing, a lot of non-technical people would think their internet / device isn't working.

Technical users probably don't want to see msn.com, and are OK with opening a blank window. So just change the settings! It's on the first tab!

>What kind of super old Windows version were these people running?

Build-servers.

Why aren't they running Windows Server if it's a server?

MSN does not load on IE in Windows Server.

Dunno, maybe they have it set up this way to build something, and one of the tools requires IE/Internet access?

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