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RFC: Internet Explorer 11 support deprecation and removal #41840
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on Apr 27, 2021 The world-wide usage of Internet Explorer 11 (IE11) has been steadily declining for years, and is currently at 0.73% according to StatCounter and 1.70% according to NetMarketShare, meaning that very small fraction of the overall world population uses this browser and benefits from our effort to support it.
For this exact reason, we shipped first version of the project without IE 11 support. I would agree with you since Microsoft only supports Edge Chromium(for end users)
Reacted by Igor Minar, Catherine Clague, KytoSai, Tiberiu Zuld, Lars Rye Jeppesen, Front-end developer, Roman Meshkov, Dalana Dharmathilake, Hrishikesh Anila Shukla, John Churchill and 2 moreReally glad to see the proactive move away from IE11.
We registered with MS so that anyone visiting us with IE11 automatically redirect in to Edge.
Reacted by Pavan Kumar Jadda, Igor Minar, Vojtech Mašek, Sylvain Dumont, Abdullah Ramzan, Denis Bendrikov, Antoine Brault, Matt Ryan, Wil Marques, KytoSai and 22 moreReacted by Kr0san89, Minijus L, Mark Goho, Denis Bendrikov, KytoSai, Heo, Julien, Front-end developer, Dalana Dharmathilake, Frči Smrči and 2 moreI think IE usage should be deprecated as soon as Microsoft pulls the plug for its support for consumers, and removed soon after (next version, maybe?).
If someone needs to still support Internet Explorer, they could either provide the needed polyfills or use an older version of Angular.Time to (finally) move on.
Reacted by Igor Minar, Denis Bendrikov, KytoSai, Sheik Althaf, Oliver Hois, Marco Bressi, beeman, Ilya Borisov, Valentin Moser, Ashish Kumar and 2 moreReacted by Michal Margiel and Alex Torres - CorganReacted by Paul Lunt, Maxence Warzecha, KytoSai and Sheik AlthafReacted by Frči SmrčiPlease consider this option: users who need IE11 support have an option to include tones of polyfills, but it will allow their apps to work.
Some companies require IE11 support because of “thin clients” they use. They don't care what will be the size of the application since app is for internal use. Leaving them with the outdated framework is not an option - it will not pass a security audit.
So with the “download tones of your polyfills” option, they would still have the ability to use Angular.
Reacted by Venkateswara Venkatraman Prasanna, Wil Marques, Stargator and Michael KühnelReacted by Garrett Darnell, Dominik Broj, Minijus L, Sylvain Dumont, Tomas Hallberg, Roger Far, Ivan Valentinov, Austin Shoecraft, Mark Goho, FuzzyAtish and 56 moreReacted by Massimo Artizzu, Cosimo Chellini, Landon Petzoldt, lfhenaol, Alex Ruiz, Daniel Santiago and Jakob KnutsenGood decision, we spend most of our UI development time in fixing that one small control which works in chrome but not in IE & then we spend a lot of our precious time in applying hacks to make it work in IE.
Clients want us to use latest angular version with IE support just in case someone uses IE. Glad, now they have to chose either latest angular version or IE support. I think timeline is perfect and may even have been earlier as I don't know why someone would use IE in 2021 when they have chromium based edge or chrome. I have a top end i7 laptop and IE still fails to load fast.
If its just because some people are used to IE and don't want to try anything else , then they need to be forced to use other browsers as otherwise they would keep using IE for another 100 years.
Reacted by Miloš Lapiš, KytoSai, Tiberiu Zuld, Front-end developer, Ilya Borisov, Hrishikesh Anila Shukla and Krishna SahuSo with the “download tones of your polyfills” option, they would still have the ability to use Angular.
@e-oz there thank you for your feedback. Angular does all of this today and offers differential loading to minimize penalty for modern browsers. But even with this approach there is many web APIs we wish we could use but simply can't because they would be incompatible with IE11.
There are real limitations to what can be polyfilled in production-ready (secure, reliable, and performant) way. The same applies to transpilation. And for some APIs its better not to use them at all than to put in place a complex and slow build pipeline that would make things compatible.
Reacted by paulparas, Vojtech Mašek, Debmallya Bhattacharya, Denis Bendrikov, FuzzyAtish, Yannick Houbrix, Massimo Artizzu, Minko Gechev, Miloš Lapiš, Diogo Sant'Ana and 30 moreReacted by Front-end developerReacted by Front-end developer and Frči SmrčiReacted by Front-end developer, Antoine Pairet and Frči SmrčiReacted by Front-end developer, Antoine Pairet and Frči SmrčiWe have long since dropped IE11 support in Ionic and support this as well.
Reacted by Igor Minar, Vojtech Mašek, Jay Bell, Tomas Hallberg, Mark Goho, Matt Netkow, Antoine Brault, Minko Gechev, Elena Yao, KytoSai and 25 moreReacted by Front-end developerReacted by Front-end developerReacted by Matt Netkow, Jay Bell, Minko Gechev, Elena Yao, KytoSai, Alex Torres - Corgan, Front-end developer and Frči SmrčiReacted by Matt Netkow, Jay Bell, Minko Gechev, Elena Yao, KytoSai, Alex Torres - Corgan, Front-end developer and Frči SmrčiI support this wholly and as quickly as possible. I realize there may be some uses cases that require ie11 but we have to move on and allow angular to evolve as a framework.
Reacted by Miloš Lapiš, Tomas Hallberg, Sergiu Bologa, Julien, Samuel Fernández, Tiberiu Zuld, Front-end developer, Ilya Borisov, Dalana Dharmathilake and MatthewWho says,
We need IE because ...orIt's too expensive to migrate from IE to...ignore the fact that those others pay all expenses (time, money, ...) instead of them, and it has been going on for a long time, and it's not possible to continue by the same way.Reacted by Dmitriy Teplov, KytoSai, Sander Elias, Oliver Hois, Julien, Tiberiu Zuld, Horace, Front-end developer, Ilya Borisov, fxmfr and 11 moreReacted by Front-end developer and Dalana DharmathilakeReacted by Front-end developerReacted by Front-end developerReacted by Front-end developerSelfishly I'd like to see this go ahead, because it's one of the things that probably has to happen before Jasmine can drop IE support.
When my clients ask for IE support it's because they need browser upgrades in their organization to be infrequent and planned, and they haven't figured out where else to get that. Dropping IE might be more palatable to those organizations if more than one Firefox ESR version is supported.
Reacted by Jeremy Elbourn, KytoSai, Rushil Perera, Tiberiu Zuld, Ilya Borisov, John Lenz and DenisThis feels like a reasonable and generous timeframe to me.
The B2B app I work on has ~1.7% IE11 users we're working to message transitioning. Being able to point to Microsoft apps and significant dev frameworks like Angular dropping support will help lend credibility to the data we present in our transition messages.
I appreciate the Angular team asking for input from the community on these major decisions!
Reacted by Igor Minar, Oliver Hois, Sergiu Bologa, Julien, Rushil Perera, Tiberiu Zuld, Matthieu Riegler, Ilya Borisov, Valentin Moser, Amit Beckenstein and 3 moreReacted by Igor Minar48 remaining items
We specifically do not support any IE version at all. We never had any issues with that - removing support greatly simplifies and improves our solution.
/update
Actually I lied, we do "support" IE: we detect IE and tell the users to upgrade /sReacted by Front-end developer, Roman Meshkov, Pavan Kumar Jadda, Avidan Chen, GaryNg, Mehrad Rafigh and Abraham WilliamsReacted by Front-end developer, Ilya Borisov, djorge-ph, Amit Beckenstein and Advaiya LadReacted by Front-end developer and Pavan Kumar JaddaReacted by Front-end developer and Pavan Kumar JaddaReacted by Front-end developer and Pavan Kumar JaddaJust a quick summary of the discussion and a reminder that the RFC closes next Monday.
So far it seems that vast majority of the people that got involved in the discussion support the deprecation and removal timeline as proposed. There are two additional smaller groups of people — those that would like us to outright remove IE11 support in v12, and those that would like to see an extension of the support period.
Several commenters asked if we could offer polyfills and additional transpilation — this is something we already heavily do and that's how the current IE11 support works, but there are real limitations to what we can do with this approach and we feel strongly that these limitations are holding the entire Angular ecosystem back and prevent all of us taking advantage of using modern Web APIs.
In #41840 (comment) @SanderElias reminded us that there are real security threats and risks affecting any businesses that still rely on IE11 and these concerns outweigh concerns about teams eventually using unsupported version of Angular.
If you have additional comments or things that we missed, please let us know. Thank you!
Reacted by Pete Bacon Darwin, eemt, Roman Meshkov, Alexey Vladimirov, Front-end developer, Miloš Lapiš, Lai Seng, Oliver Hois, Denis Bendrikov, Thomas James and 19 moreReacted by Front-end developer and Zack ReamReacted by Front-end developer, Dalana Dharmathilake and Zack ReamReacted by Front-end developer, Danny Koppenhagen, Dalana Dharmathilake and Zack ReamReacted by Front-end developer, Pavan Kumar Jadda, LanderBeeuwsaert, Wil Marques, Dalana Dharmathilake and Zack ReamI am really glad the Angular team is taking a step into a modern, IE free web 🚀 🔥 !
I also do agree with suggestions as @waynon s (tackle the process even faster) since the only users of IE are "old fashioned" companies that rarely update their systems anyway (my humble experience). They have found workarounds for IE and probably will find further if necessary.This is probably not the most objective or persuasive argument, but HEY, we all know there's truth in it 😄 😇
One follow up comment. For those who believe they "need IE support for legacy applications." Microsoft has provided a path forward: Edge/legacy mode. If that doesn't work, that's Microsoft's responsibility to address. It shouldn't hold up everyone else.
Reacted by Sergej Grilborzer, Jacob Kostenick and Ryan JohnsonReacted by StargatorI totally support the move that is being taken up and timeline also seems perfect. I don't know who is using IE in 2021. Great decision.
I do think we can remove support for IE 11 in Angular v12.
😘😘😘This RFC is now closed, thank you everyone for participating.
Since my last summary of the discussion we heard from several developers that they'd like IE11 support removed in v12. Judging by the number of reactions, it seems that this group of community members is still in minority compared to those that would prefer to go with the originally proposed timeline.
In reality the difference between dropping IE11 in v12 and v13 at this point in time is negligible. The master/main branch will be open for breaking changes targeting v13 in 2-3 months, so that's when we we'll able to start making IE11 incompatible changes. 2-3 months is insignificant in the long term perspective, and not worth creating the extra inconveniences for developers and teams that still support IE11.
So to summarize, the originally proposed timeline is the one with the most support, this means that IE11 support will be deprecated in v Angular v12 (to be released in May 2021 and supported through November 2022), and IE11 support removal will occur in Angular v13 (late 2021).
Thank you again everyone for sharing your thoughts with us and helping us make the decision.
Reacted by Thomas James, Denis Bendrikov, Massimo Artizzu, Kr0san89, Ahmed "Jay" Bishtawi, Elliot Lewis, Front-end developer, Alex Torres - Corgan, Samuel Fernández, MBRZ Crew and 24 moreReacted by Maksim Popov, Amit Beckenstein, Pavan Kumar Jadda, Rushil Perera, KytoSai and IndrarajReacted by Wil Marques, Pavan Kumar Jadda, Rushil Perera, KytoSai, Indraraj and Felix Lemke@IgorMinar thanks for opening this. I wished I had seen it before the ng 12 release, but I'm happy that the team engaged in this discussion.
Reacted by Igor MinarMicrosoft finally retiring Internet Explorer 11 on June 15,2022
Reacted by Front-end developer, Adem Simsek, Matthieu Riegler and Alvaro CruzReacted by Adem Simsek, Ben Racicot and Ryan JohnsonReacted by Adem SimsekReacted by Adem Simsek- unpinned this issue
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TL;DR
The Angular team is deprecating support for Internet Explorer 11 in Angular v12 (to be released in May 2021 and supported through November 2022), and plans to remove support for this browser in Angular v13 (late 2021).
Why?
The worldwide usage of Internet Explorer 11 (IE11) has been steadily declining for years, and is currently at 0.73% according to StatCounter and 1.70% according to NetMarketShare, meaning that a very small fraction of the overall world population uses this browser and benefits from our effort to support it.
At the same time, IE11 is the last non-evergreen browser that Angular currently supports, and due to the feature gap between IE11 and evergreen browsers, it is becoming increasingly difficult to provide modern features in Angular while also preserving IE11 compatibility.
Since some of the core functionality of the framework, Material components, and CLI must work on IE11, supporting this legacy browser has resulted in complexity, compromises, or even in our inability to offer solutions that would take advantage of modern web APIs.
Community feedback
We'd like the community to weigh in on the timeline of removal of IE11 support.
Angular v12 is planned to be the last version of Angular that supports IE11, this version will be:
See Angular's support policy & schedule for more information about differences between active and LTS support, and other support policy info.
This timeline seeks to balance when the benefits of IE11 removal will materialize with the need to ensure ecosystem stability and support. If however the community feels strongly that we should move ahead on a more aggressive timeline, or if there are reasons to delay the actual removal further, we'd like to hear from you. Please provide the arguments and use cases in comments below.
This RFC will close on May 10, 2021.
The benefits
Angular is an evergreen platform, meaning that it stays up to date with the evolving Web ecosystem. By removing support for legacy browsers we can focus our efforts on providing modern solutions and better support to developers and users.
There are several groups of stakeholders that will benefit from the removal of IE11 support:
Application users
Application authors and stakeholders
Library authors
Angular team
Background information
Microsoft support
IE11 was initially released almost 8 years ago, in 2013, and since that time, it has been receiving only bug and security fixes. It was superseded by Microsoft Edge, which unlike IE11 is an evergreen browser, which automatically receives feature updates including web platform API enhancements.
On August 17, 2020 Microsoft announced deprecation of IE11 support in Microsoft 365 apps and services, with the removal date set for August 17, 2021. Microsoft Teams already removed support for IE11 on November 30, 2020.
Web API feature gap
The difference in Web APIs & features supported by IE11 compared to evergreen (modern) browsers is too vast to list in this RFC, and can instead be reviewed at caniuse.org.
Browser usage
source: statcounter.com
source: netmarketshare.com