On January 12th 2016, Microsoft officially declared the end of support for the browsers Internet Explorer 8, 9 and 10 – on the Windows 7, 8.1 and 10 operating systems. This means compatibility fixes, technical support and most importantly security updates will no longer be provided by Microsoft leaving you, the end-user, vulnerable to malicious attacks. Microsoft claimed they would continue to support the latest version of Internet Explorer (which is currently IE11) until further notice.
If you are on Windows 10 however, you’ll have access to Microsoft’s all-new browser, Edge – which is faster, sleeker and has a range of new features, which you may find useful when browsing the web.
What should you do?
Good question! We seriously believe you should update your browser as soon as possible to mitigate any risk of unwanted viruses or malware. Luckily, if you have Windows updates turned on, (guide to check here) you’re good to go as Internet Explorer updates with Windows. However, if you do not or cannot, for some reason, update your operating system then we advise you to choose from one of the following three browsers (which are listed in order of our preference):
These browsers do not rely on Windows updates to remain secure. Instead, they automatically update once a new version containing security updates and features are available, meaning you will be secure from any security loopholes.
What does this mean for Ballyhoo?
Going forward, we have decided to drop Internet Explorer 9 and Internet Explorer 10 from testing as we believe they are no longer safe for use and everyone should be upgrading as soon as possible, not only this but our statistics have demonstrated that both of these browsers combined have had less than 1% market share since March 2016.
| 2016 | Total | Edge14 | Edge13 | Edge12 | IE11 | IE10 | Older |
| September | 5.3% | 0.5% | 0.8% | 0.2% | 3.4% | 0.2% | 0.2% |
| August | 5.2% | 0.2% | 1.0% | 0.2% | 3.3% | 0.2% | 0.3% |
| July | 5.2% | 1.2% | 0.2% | 3.4% | 0.2% | 0.2% | |
| June | 5.6% | 1.0% | 0.2% | 4.0% | 0.2% | 0.2% | |
| May | 5.7% | 1.0% | 0.2% | 3.9% | 0.3% | 0.3% | |
| March | 6.1% | 1.0% | 0.2% | 4.1% | 0.3% | 0.5% | |
| February | 6.2% | 0.9% | 0.2% | 4.1% | 0.4% | 0.6% | |
| January | 6.2% | 0.8% | 0.4% | 3.8% | 0.5% | 0.7% |
Statistics provided by W3Schools*
If, however, you do need these browsers to be supported for your website or web application, arrangements can be made as we still have the tools to support them. We will also continue to analyse these browsers on a case-by-case basis, checking the usage of these browsers for the particular target audience at hand and making our decision based on that – but by default we will no longer be supporting Internet Explorer 9 or 10.
