Most users have little to no "tech hygiene" so allowing random devices maintained by these users to connect will open your company to a world of hurt.

For basic standard activities most companies offer locked down environments like Citrix or externally facing portals that can be safely accessed form any home computer. The alternative is to use a company issued device for work.

That's not the usage I set out above at all. Not even ballpark.

I am talking about an externally accessible "internal" enterprise website, and that IE Mode cannot be used well with it. I'm not sure how you got from website to "access sensitive parts of the enterprise network." Employees are BYOD to access the company's "internal" website from an external endpoint. That's the topic. That's where IE Mode applies.

It reads like you and the sibling comment forgot what is even being discussed. This is IE Mode for websites. Specifically for "internal" enterprise websites. I am discussing the highly common practice of allowing access to "internal" websites externally (inc. via privately owned employee's devices over the internet).

I replied to to your later generalization related to the devices' "managed" status, the one turning your original point into an "inflexibility" and "employee privacy" issue. BYOD is/should not be 100% your regular private device. Moreover it's there to allow you more flexibility not less, so you don't have to use a company device and work from the office. You can't give perfect flexibility/privacy to your employees while ensuring even a modicum of security. And someone will always complain about something.

The problem isn't that companies manage BYOD devices, it's that they still use legacy sites that only work with IE. So coming back to your original point, the solution as I already said is to provide you with something like Citrix or equivalent (device is no longer relevant), or for the company to fix its websites. Not for MS to implement the magic button that makes your company's legacy sites work for another 20 years. But if you have a security team at all your BYOD will still remain a (partially) managed device regardless.

MS is on one hand intentionally restricting the compatibility mode to force lazy companies with bad practices to upgrade their aging sites without straight up cutting them off. On the other hand I'm not sure if MS could even implement a true "IE mode" since nobody wants that legacy code in any modern browser.

Trying to fix the problem on the browser side is the wrong answer, which is what Microsoft is trying to nudge enterprises to by progressively making it harder to use legacy dependent apps like that.

That logic could be used to magic anyway any need for IE Mode for anyone. Why even take part in this discussion if you dismiss the need for the very thing we're discussing? Seems fruitless.

I honestly have no interest in discussing the merits of IE Mode conceptually. I am talking about the implementation from the point of it existing on-wards. You're welcome to find someone else to argue this with however.

1. Move away from what is probably a home grown bespoke time tracking system and use one of the many SASS vendors. The company can easily pay some consultants who would gladly take their money.

2. Provide a company device.

3. On the extreme, setup some Citrix terminals they can log into from their devices.

It is already. But I don't see the relevance.

> Provide a company device. On the extreme, setup some Citrix terminals they can log into from their devices.

In order to use a web browser to connect to an internet facing website? I genuinely don't understand what you think got said for this reply to make sense. It certainly doesn't seem relevant to the discussion of how IE Mode routes.

It is a public facing "internal" enterprise website. It has mixed content (Java Applets and web content). It has to target IE11 for web content due to the Java Applets. IE Mode doesn't solve this well because any device an employee can use can also access the site (it is on the internet after all).

A Citrix terminal(???) is a worse solution than just having everyone use IE11 as today.

The relevance is that instead of the corporation biting the bullet and moving away from a home grown app and expecting Microsoft to support them forever, the company should be investing in newer (ie less than a decade and a half old system).

In order to use a web browser to connect to an internet facing website? I genuinely don't understand what you think got said for this reply to make sense. It certainly doesn't seem relevant to the discussion of how IE Mode routes.

The internet facing “website” that is still using proprietary old IE technology is no more of a modern definition of a website than one requiring RealPlayer or a Gopher client.

And depending on any Java applet doesn’t help the majority of users who are using mobile devices.

It is a public facing "internal" enterprise website. It has mixed content (Java Applets and web content). It has to target IE11 for web content due to the Java Applets.

The problem is that depending on Java applets in 2019 doesn’t serve the employees well and neither did whoever decided it was a good idea not to start a migration strategy a decade ago....

- We know Java Applets don't work on non-IE11 browsers and mobile devices, that's why we've spent the last three years migrating to modern web standards, that's why we have mixed legacy/modern content, which incidentally exactly the scenario IE Mode was invented to solve. Thus the entire point of this feature and my post.

- If you ONLY have Java Applets IE Mode does nothing for you. It is a migration helper.

- Our time management system is from a popular vendor and uses modern web technologies, it isn't relevant here.

- No "proprietary IE technology" is used. The website has Java Applets built using Oracle's technology on it. IE11 supports Java Applets. Edge, Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and others do not.

- Companies have invested tens of years into now defunct technologies. Suggesting they migrate tens of years of investment in an eighth of the time isn't at all realistic or constructive. It is an ongoing process. We'll be stuck mid-migration for another five-ish years (thousands of man hours still to go).

- Thank you for telling me what the company should have done 12 years ago, and 8 years before I joined. Very constructive.

2. IE11 supports Java Applets. Edge, Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and others do not.

Those two sentences don’t go together. For all intents and purposes using Java applets in a browser is “IE only”.

Companies have invested tens of years into now defunct technologies. Suggesting they migrate tens of years of investment in an eighth of the time isn't at all realistic or constructive.

The industry has been moving away from Java applets since the introduction of the iPhone in 2007. Java applet deprecation is not a new or unforeseen development.

Not really a point of contention. Also not really relevant to this discussion. The whole "12 years ago a company [I didn't even work at] should have done X Y Z" isn't constructive, or remotely relevant to a discussion of IE Mode today and how it operates.

One of the major issues with Windows has always been that they have hack on top of hack to keep backwards compatibility. You can read Raymond Chen’s MSDN blog to get an idea of how bad it is.

The answer has to be somewhere between Apple - not long enough to be appropriate for the Enterprise - and too long in the case of Microsoft where it slows down development, causes an increase security vulnerability surface, and causes Windows to be a resource hog compared to other operating systems.

Well that's the whole point. MS is forcing your company's hand into doing something about that site that's very important for you but somehow was ignored for years. Everyone knows most companies won't move a finger without external pressure. MS is providing that pressure.

The only alternative would be to build support for Java applets into a modern browser. Which is exactly what everyone tried to get rid of. So expecting IE mode to fix that issue for you makes no sense. I don't understand how this could even be a complaint.

You just replied to a post that said verbatim: "we've spent the last three years migrating" with this. So, no. If you had read the previous posts in the thread you'd know that already.