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Google Kills Apps Support For Internet Explorer 8 296

An anonymous reader writes "Google today [Friday] announced it is discontinuing support for Internet Explorer 8 in Google Apps, including its Business, Education, and Government editions. The kill date is November 15, 2012. After that, IE8 users accessing Google Apps will see a message recommending that they upgrade their browser."
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Google Kills Apps Support For Internet Explorer 8

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  • Another nail for XP (Score:5, Informative)

    by juventasone ( 517959 ) on Saturday September 15, 2012 @01:13AM (#41343877)

    The summary leaves out the interesting part: IE8 is the latest version available for Windows XP. And there's no place that XP exists more than business, education, and government. This is Google's way to get sysadmins comfortable with Chrome in the workplace.

  • Re:As they should (Score:4, Informative)

    by Sir_Sri ( 199544 ) on Saturday September 15, 2012 @01:55AM (#41344055)

    Only support current browsers

    8 was released in 2009. IE9 last year. I'm not really sure it matters for google, but if you do custom web applications 3 years isn't really a long time to have to keep it alive.

    The big thing with IE8 is that it's the last IE for windows XP. Which is why it has a larger markeshare than IE9 still. marketshare from June [hitslink.com] and more marketshare by a lot. (25% vs 18%).

    If windows 8 looked like it was about to take off like a rocket and Windows XP was on a rapid trajectory to obsolescence then sure, but that isn't really what's happening. Windows XP is slowly dying away, but it's still slowly, and especially in the business market lots of potential customers are locked into the browser on XP for the moment.

    Granted, google probably has a lot of metrics and they probably know this isn't a problem for *their* products, but for the us little guys it's a different problem.

  • by viperidaenz ( 2515578 ) on Saturday September 15, 2012 @02:06AM (#41344101)
    Businesses don't tend to use the OS install that comes with the machine, they load their own builds they have made and tested themselves.

    Support = security fixes.Come 11 April 2014, no more security fixes for XP. Good luck getting Office 2014* that will install on XP as well.

    * or 2015, 2016, 2017....
  • by KingMotley ( 944240 ) on Saturday September 15, 2012 @02:57AM (#41344273) Journal

    Off the top of my head:
    Opacity (real opacity, including opacity on PNGs with an alpha channel).
    Being able to define colors using RGBA
    CSS3 transforms
    Fully supporting @font-face for real web fonts
    HTML5 video support with H.264/MPEG4 so we can drop flash video players finally
    WOFF font support instead of the EOT (IE-only font format)
    Box shadows
    multiple backgrounds on a single object
    CSS3 selectors (:last-child, :nth-child, etc)

    Stuff even IE9 doesn't support:
    text-shadows
    3d transforms
    aync on script tags
    web sockets
    Filereader API (Smarter upload buttons)
    CSS3 transitions
    CSS3 gradients
    HTML5 form elements (date picker, range, integer, etc)

    Yes, those are all things that we use on our web site, or wanted to use and either had to write custom fallbacks just for IE, rewrite to use a different (more difficult, less efficient, larger) technique, or just let IE look like crap.

  • by shutdown -p now ( 807394 ) on Saturday September 15, 2012 @03:35AM (#41344411) Journal

    no unified buttons

    Clarify?

    menu bar

    You can activate it by pressing Alt as usual. Then you can go and check View -> Toolbars -> Menu bar to keep it on if you want.

    normal size address bar (not the tiny one IE9 has

    Do you refer to the fact that address bar is on the same line with tabs, and is squeezed to the right? If so, then right-click on any tab, and select "Show tabs in separate row".

  • Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Saturday September 15, 2012 @03:54AM (#41344481)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Saturday September 15, 2012 @03:59AM (#41344501)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

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