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Comment by tzaman | Hacker News Reader

Dear Microsoft,

other browser vendors release new versions on a regular basis, regardless of the operating system number. This enables browser-related technologies to evolve at a more rapid pace. So please do us all a favor and stop locking major IE releases to Windows versions and just try to imitate what others do. We won't judge you for copying, promise.

Sincerely, Web developers

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Dear Google,

please stop arbitrarily bumping your version numbers so you don't have to hear complaints about open source contributions being ignored. Do you seriously expect us to believe you got through 25 real, full versions in 4.5 years?

Sincerely, "one guy not trying to talk for everyone".

That's kinda the point, not noticing what the browser version even is, because it's completely irrelevant (except with IE). What's important is that it follows standards and supports new features sooner rather than later.

I tend to agree, I much prefer semantic versioning eg: major.minor.patch for most software but for Chrome it isn't really important because it auto-updates. I haven't checked which version I am running for months.

Well, it does require more effort on Microsoft's part to support old versions of Windows. They always use new APIs, and they often bring big improvements and have to be backported to work. For example, either IE10 or IE9 used DirectWrite, which had to be backported.

Also, it wouldn't make sense for them to release new updates for officially out-of-support OS versions.

>For example, either IE10 or IE9 used DirectWrite

Direct2D. DirectWrite is old technology. Direct2D is used by IE9+.

No, they re-used a trademark. DirectWrite refers to their new text rendering subsystem:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-gb/library/windows/desktop/dd36...

Note the backport:

>Windows 7 or Windows Vista with Service Pack 2 (SP2) and Platform Update for Windows Vista

Is this because it is tied to Window Explorer (the Windows file system)? Or is it because the developers are dense.

Things like product release schedules are rarely in the hands of developers. More likely, a product manager and company dictate when new versions will get pushed out.

Internet Explorer usually relies on new OS features which have to be backported. Also, Microsoft never releases IE for versions of Windows that have gone out of support (Windows XP and Vista), because they don't want to have to do the extra work to do so, and because their policy on out-of-support is exactly that: mo new updates.

Out of mainstream support. See http://support.microsoft.com/lifecycle/

Yes. Extended support means no updates aside from security.

Aren't they making releases faster with IE11 compared to earlier cycles of taking years between versions? IE10 is from 5 or 6 months ago.

I thought IE10 had the ability to auto-update?

Unless you're using Windows 7, in which case that was on Feb 23 (30 days ago.)

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