The life cycle of Internet Explorer browsers

I came to this subject after a fairly heated debate over which browsers intranet applications should still support. I personally judge by usability and functionality, so the debate seemed beside the point. What matters is setting a minimum threshold for functionality. Like it or not, I think that today the threshold is Internet Explorer 4.0. Arguments based on the fact that the browser is no longer supported by Microsoft itself miss the point.

If applications are fully functional and usable in that browser, a great many backward compatibility problems go away. I couldn’t leave it alone, so I went looking for Microsoft’s actual browser support policy. I have to say it was buried deep on Microsoft’s site. The support cutoff dates were an even bigger surprise. On Windows 2000 Professional, Internet Explorer 5.01 SP2 is supported until 29 October 2002. The whole life cycle of Internet Explorer browsers is a little odd and definitely worth a look.