In the coming months, Microsoft will disable the IE app on Windows 10 devices, guiding users instead to its next-generation Edge browser, first released in 2015. The IE icon will still remain on users’ desktops, though, and Edge incorporates a service called “IE mode” to preserve access to old websites built for Internet Explorer. Microsoft says it will support IE mode through at least 2029. Additionally, IE will still work for now on all supported versions of Windows 8.1, Windows 7 with Microsoft’s Extended Security Updates, and Windows Server, though the company says it will eventually phase IE out in these, too.  

Seven years after the debut of Edge, industry analysis indicates that Internet Explorer may still hold more than half a percent of the total global browser market share. And in the United States, that share may be closer to as much as 2 percent.

“I do think we’ve made progress, and we probably won’t see as many exploits against IE in the future, but we will still have remnants of Internet Explorer for a long time that scammers can take advantage of,” says Ronnie Tokazowski, a longtime independent malware researcher and principal threat advisor at the cybersecurity firm Cofense. “Internet Explorer as the browser will be gone, but there are still pieces that exist.”

For something that’s been around as long as IE, backward compatibility is difficult to balance with the desire for a clean slate. “We haven’t forgotten that some parts of the web still rely on Internet Explorer’s specific behaviors and features,” Sean Lyndersay, the general manager of Microsoft Edge Enterprise, wrote in an IE retrospective on Wednesday, pointing to IE mode.

But he added that there was a real need to start over with Edge rather than trying to salvage IE. “The web has evolved and so have browsers,” he wrote last week. “Incremental improvements to Internet Explorer couldn’t match the general improvements to the web at large, so we started fresh.”

Microsoft says it will still support IE’s underlying browser engine, known as “MSHTML,” and it has its eye on versions of Windows still “used in critical environments.” But Maddie Stone, a researcher for Google’s Project Zero vulnerability hunting team, points out that hackers are still exploiting IE vulnerabilities in real-world attacks.

“Since we began tracking in-the-wild 0-days, Internet Explorer has had a pretty consistent number of 0-days each year. 2021 actually tied 2016 for the most in-the-wild Internet Explorer 0-days we’ve ever tracked, even though Internet Explorer’s market share of web browser users continues to decrease,” she wrote in April, referring to previously unknown vulnerabilities, called zero-days. “Internet Explorer is still a ripe attack surface for initial entry into Windows machines, even if the user doesn’t use Internet Explorer as their internet browser."

In her analysis, Stone particularly noted that while the number of new IE vulnerabilities Project Zero has detected has remained fairly constant, attackers have shifted over the years to increasingly target the MSHTML browser engine through malicious files like tainted Office documents. This could mean that neutering the IE application won’t immediately change attack trends that are already in motion.

Given how difficult it has been to rein in Internet Explorer at all, Microsoft and IE users around the world have certainly come a long way. But for a browser that’s supposed to be dead, IE still very much loads with the living.

The Ghost of Internet Explorer Will Haunt the Web for Years

(May require free registration to view)

While the reopening of program windows can be handy at times, it can sometimes be a frustrating experience as well. Handy, because you don't have to launch programs manually, provided that the reopened programs will be used in the active session as well.

Frustrating, because program windows may be opened, which you don't require. There may also be a delay between the launching of previously opened applications and the actual loading of them.

How to stop Windows 11 from reopening applications

The main preference that Windows 11 uses to determine whether to reopen programs is found in the Settings.

1. Select Start and then Settings from the Start Menu. You may also use the keyboard shortcut Windows-I for quick Settings access.
2. Go to Accounts.
3. Select Sign-In options.
4. Scroll down to the "Additional Settings" section on the page that opens.
5. Toggle the preference "Automatically save my restartable apps and restart them when I sign back in" so that it reads Off.

The change takes effect immediately. You may undo the change by repeating the steps above. The preference should have the On status in that case in the end.

The description reveals that only some apps and programs will be restarted when the feature is enabled.  Third-party applications need to register as "restartable apps" to be included in the reopening when the feature is enabled.

Note: Applications configured to run at system start will still do so. Use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl-Shift-Esc to open the Windows Task Manager. Select "more details" if you have the basic window, and switch to Startup. Windows 11 lists the main startup applications there.  Right-click on any and select Disable to block the program from starting with Windows 11.

How to stop Windows 11 from reopening File Explorer folders

Windows 11 may also reopen folders of the default file manager on the next start of the system; this feature is controlled elsewhere.

Here is how you turn it off:

1. Open File Explorer on the Windows 11 device.
2. Select the "three dots" in the header and in the menu that opens Options.
3. Switch to the View tab in the new window that opens.
4. Scroll down until you find the preference "Restore previous folder windows at log-on".
5. Remove the checkmark from the preference to turn the feature off.

Windows 11 won't reload File Explorer windows anymore from that moment on. You may undo the change at any time by checking the preference again.

Now You: do you make use of the auto-reopen feature of Windows?

How to stop Windows 11 from reopening program windows on restart or sign-in

7-Zip users may download the latest version of the application from the official website. Downloads for 64-bit, 32-bit and ARM versions of Windows are supported. The program is still compatible with out-of-support versions of Windows, including Windows XP and Vista. All officially supported versions of Windows, including server versions, are supported as well.

7-Zip 22.00 for Linux is available for download already, while the Mac OS version is not yet available.

7-Zip 22.00 final

7-Zip 22.00 brings along with it several new features that extend the functionality of the application. The new version of the archiver supports the extraction of Apple File System APFS images. Apple introduced the Apple File System in Mac OS 10.13 and on iOS several years ago. The file system is optimized for flash and solid state drive storage solutions.

TAR archive support has seen several improvements in 7-Zip 22.00. 7-Zip can create TAR archives in POSIX tar format using the switches -ttar -mm=pax or -ttar -mm=posix now. Additionally, 7-Zip may store file timestamps with high precision in tar/pax archives using the switches ttar -mm=pax -mtp=3 -mtc -mta.

Last but not least, Linux users may use the following two new switches with TAR archives:

• -snoi : store owner/group ids in archive or set owner/group ids from archive to extracted files.
• -snon : store owner/group names in archive

On Windows, 7-Zip 22.00 adds support for the -snz switch, which propagates the Zone.Identifier stream to extract files. The stream is used by Windows for security purposes; it may be used to determine whether a file has been created locally or been downloaded from the Internet.

The preference is also available in the graphical user interface. Open 7-Zip and go to Tools > Options. Switch to the 7-Zip tab in the options window, and set the preference "Propagate Zone.Id stream to one of the following values:

• No -- default. 7-Zip does not propagate Zone.Identifier streams.
• Yes -- 7-Zip propagates Zone.Identifier streams for all jobs.
• For Office files -- 7-Zip propagates Zone.Identifier streams for Office files only.

7-Zip 22.00 includes a new options window in the "add to archive" configuration dialog. It includes options to change the timestamp precision, change other time related configuration options, and block the changing of the last access time of the source files.

You may check out the full changelog on Sourceforge.

Now You: do you use 7-Zip or another file archiver?

7-Zip 22.00 final is now available

Frontpaged:   7-Zip 22.00

According to leaker Mukul Sharma, Twitter is testing a new feature that will encourage users to review replies with potentially harmful or offensive language. To be more specific, Twitter will give an edit button to remove words that may hurt sentiments or promote bullying.

While the implementation and its documentation is not public yet, it will likely identify and label some of the words as offensive and will inform respondents accordingly. However, users will be able to send feedback to the micro-blogging site if they think their replies are not offensive.

What Twitter is trying to do here is that it's taking a more proactive approach towards curbing social media abuses. Instead of deleting tweets that contain abusive language, Twitter will encourage users not to post them in the first place. A more robust way of discouraging offensive replies would have been displaying a warning stating that tweeting certain type of abusive language could even land users in prison.

Twitter is also testing an edit button for the authors of Tweets, aiming to let people fix their typos even after publishing their tweets. It's more of a curative approach.

Another useful capability may show the Like/Dislike button on the Twitter Notifications areas, giving users an option to like or downvote any tweets directly from the Notifications section.

Notably, Twitter has been testing the downvote button with select users for the last few months, but the company clarified that it wouldn't allow the public to see the dislike counts. It's strictly for the purpose of helping Twitter understand what type of content users want to see.

 Twitter Edit button is here, but only for potentially abusive/harmful/offensive tweets for now.

Plus, Twitter is testing a like/dislike feature, which lets you view the stats (likes, comments, RTs) in the notifications section itself and lets you engage with the tweet right there pic.twitter.com/UovNjhdFek

 — Mukul Sharma (@stufflistings) June 20, 2022

Twitter is now extending the same capability to Notifications, but it won't be limited to giving you the option to like or dislike tweets. It will do more than that, as Twitter is also working hard to allow users to view stats such as counts for likes, retweets, and replies directly from the Notifications section.

Twitter is testing the aforementioned new features with select users, and it's unclear when, or if, they will roll out publicly.

Source

Google Maps already allowed you to avoid toll roads when requesting driving directions, but now it can give you an estimate of how much it'll cost if you select a route with tolls.

First previewed in April, the Google Maps app now offers the option to toggle on or off the toll fare under Settings > Navigation > See toll pass prices.

 Tweet

Toll road fare estimates are based on “trusted information from local tolling authorities” and will take into account the day of the week and time of day you’ll be passing through. Google says(Opens in a new window) the toll feature will cover "nearly 2,000 toll roads in the US, India, Japan, and Indonesia," with more countries coming soon.

Google also says Maps "will have the option within settings to show toll prices with or without having a toll pass," since sometimes paying with an automated option like E-ZPass is cheaper than paying in cash. We spotted toll price estimates on Google Maps in iOS and Android, where it was turned on by default. (Tap Change toll settings under the estimate to turn it off quickly.) We did not yet see the option to choose something other than a toll pass, though.

Allowing Google Maps to suggest toll roads, meanwhile, can still see it recommend them over faster routes that don’t include tolls, so play around with it before you hit the road.

Source

WhatsApp has rolled out several new features this past week, including the ability to mute people during group calls (via Android Central). This sanity-saving feature seems helpful not just for muting people who forget to do it themselves, but also if you’re in the same room as someone who’s also on the call and don’t want to hear an echo of what they say.

While some conferencing apps, like Zoom and Microsoft Teams, let hosts mute all participants (or specific ones), they typically don’t offer a way for individual users to mute whoever they want during a call. This feature offers a new level of control that’s probably best saved for chaotic meetings that involve up to the maximum of eight people on video calls — or up to 32 on voice calls.

In addition to the new muting feature, WhatsApp now lets you message specific people while on a group call, perhaps if you want to make a note to someone during a meeting or crack a joke that might not fly with the whole group. WhatsApp is also rolling out a new banner that will alert you when someone new has joined a call after it already started.

The messaging service is building up more than just its group calling feature. On Friday, WhatsApp announced that you can now choose which contacts can see your profile photo, about, and last seen status that shows when you were last active on the platform. This could help keep your profile private from professional contacts, or anyone who you don’t want to have access to this information 24 / 7. Last year, WhatsApp began hiding your last seen status from strangers by default due to potential privacy implications.

Earlier this week, WhatsApp finally rolled out the ability for Android users to transfer their chat histories to iPhone after the company initially started letting users transfer their conversation data in the opposite direction (from iPhone to Android) last year.

WhatsApp now lets you mute individual users during group calls

Changelog

Microsoft’s recently-released Office Insider Build 15330.20114 for Current Channel Insiders on Windows added new features for Outlook, Office Suite, and Excel. It allows you to add SketchUp files to your Office creations. The latest build also introduces From Dataflows connector, allowing users to connect and import data from dataflows directly into Excel.

Microsoft releases a new Office update monthly for Beta Channel subscribers on Windows, adding new features and changes. Microsoft is also expected to release a new Office Insider Build for the Beta Channel Insiders next month. We’ll keep you updated if we find anything interesting in the update.

To update the Microsoft Office Insider Preview Build to the latest version, open any Office program and go to File> Account> Update Options> Update Now.

Microsoft releases Office Insider Preview Build 15407.20000 for Windows users

While the browser extension is not new, being developed since early 2021, it was recently posted to Y Combinator's Hacker News, so we thought we would take a look at it.

uBlackList is a browser extension for both Chromium and Firefox that allows you to input a list of websites you want to be blocked from search results.

Whether these sites are low quality, are known for misleading information, or you simply have no desire to read their content, uBlackList can prevent them from being displayed on the Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo, Ecosia, Qwant, StartPage, and Yahoo! Japan search engines.

Removing sites from search result pages

To get started with uBlackList, install the browser extension from the Chrome Web Store or Firefox Add-ons page. Once installed, you can click on the extension's icon and select 'Options' to configure the extension.

From the options screen, you can add the sites you would like to block from search results using regular expressions or match patterns, as shown below.

For example, if you want to remove all pages from example.com and Wikipedia (just an example!) from search results, you could add the following patterns to uBlackList:

*://*.example.com/*
*://*.wikipedia.com/*

Once you click on the Save button and perform a search that returns results from wikipedia.com, you will find that they are no longer displayed, as shown below.

Even more helpful, the extension adds a 'Block this site" link next to URLs shown in search results, easily letting you block sites as you see them.

By default, the extension will only remove search results from Google, but as we said previously, it also supports blocking sites in the Bing, DuckDuckGo, Ecosia, Qwant, StartPage, and Yahoo! Japan search engines.

It's also possible to configure a URL that contains a list of patterns that should be blocked, which will be downloaded and updated regularly.

Finally, you can configure the extension to synchronize your settings across the Google Cloud, allowing you to use the same settings on different browsers that you may use.

I tested the extension throughout the day and found that it did a great job removing sites that I felt were cluttering up search results related to malware removal.

For those who wish to try out uBlackList, you can install it from the Google Chrome Web Store or Mozilla Firefox Add-ons page or download the source from the project's GitHub page.

Browser extension lets you remove specific sites from search results

The option to close a tab with a double click is available in the accessibility settings. It is disabled by default, so you need to navigate to Edge Settings > Accessibility and turn on the "Use double-click to close browser tabs" option. After that, double-click a tab with the left mouse button to close it.

It is also worth mentioning that Edge users can close a webpage using a middle button (wheel click) or the Ctrl + W shortcut, but some users argue that double-click is a more convenient option. Whatever is your preference, Edge Canary now lets you choose between the two.

As with other changes in the Canary channel, double-click to close a tab is available for a limited number of Insiders. Microsoft is testing the waters before expanding the feature to more users in other channels, so your browser might take a few days or weeks to receive the double-click to close a tab feature.

Source: Leopeva64-2 on Reddit

Edge Canary gets option to close tabs using double click

The company says in a new entry on the Windows release health dashboard that "you might be unable to sign in using Azure Active Directory (AAD)" on a Windows Arm-based device after installing updates released as part of this month's Patch Tuesday.

"Apps and services which use Azure Active Directory to sign in, might also be affected," Microsoft explains. 

"Some scenarios which might be affected are VPN connections, Microsoft Teams, OneDrive, and Outlook."

The complete list of Windows versions affected by this newly acknowledged known issue includes only the following client platforms: Windows 11 21H2, Windows 10 21H2, Windows 10 21H1, and Windows 10, version 20H2.

Redmond engineers are now working on a resolution for these AAD and Microsoft 365 login problems and will release a fix to address them with a future Windows update.

Workaround available: switch to web apps

The company has also shared a workaround for affected customers experiencing sign-in issues until a solution to this issue is provided.

According to Microsoft, users who want to keep using the affected products should switch to the impacted apps' web versions. 

"To mitigate the issue, you can use the web versions of the affected apps, such as OneDrive, Microsoft Teams, and Outlook.com," Microsoft says.

This month's Windows updates are plagued by more issues, with Redmond revealing today that users may also experience connectivity issues when using Wi-Fi hotspots on up-to-date client and server systems.

June's updates may also cause backup issues on Windows Server systems, with apps failing to backup data using Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) due to security enforcement introduced to address a privilege escalation security flaw (CVE-2022-30154).

June Windows updates break Microsoft 365 sign-ins on Arm devices

The problem affects various Windows client and server versions, such as Windows 11, 10, and even 7. Currently, the only way to bypass this bug is to disable the Wi-Fi hotspot and find another way to connect to the Internet.

After installing KB5014697, Windows devices might be unable use the Wi-Fi hotspot feature. When attempting to use the hotspot feature, the host device might lose the connection to the internet after a client device connects.

Workaround: To mitigate the issue and restore internet access on the host device, you can disable the Wi-Fi hotspot feature. For instructions, please see Use your Windows PC as a mobile hotspot.

Those in dire need to use Wi-Fi hotspot on their Windows computers can try rolling back the botched Windows update and wait for Microsoft to release a better workaround than just turning off the needed feature.

Source

Here are the changes and improvements:

• New! We added IP address auditing for incoming Windows Remote Management (WinRM) connections in security event 4262 and WinRM event 91. This We fixed an issue that fails to log the source IP address and machine name for a remote PowerShell connection.
• New! We added Server Message Block (SMB) redirector (RDR) specific public File System Control (FSCTL) code FSCTL_LMR_QUERY_INFO.
• New! We made the SMB client and SMB server cipher suite order configurable using PowerShell.

• New! We introduced search highlights:

Search highlights will present notable and interesting moments of what’s special about each day—like holidays, anniversaries, and other educational moments in time both globally and in your region. To see search highlights, click or tap on the search icon on your taskbar.

For enterprise customers, search highlights will also feature the latest updates from your organization and suggest people, files, and more.

Search highlights will roll out to Windows 11 customers over the next several weeks. We are taking a phased and measured approach. Broad availability will occur in the coming months. For group configuration information, see Group configuration: search highlights in Windows.

Moving on, following is the list of bug fixes in this build:

• We fixed an issue that might cause an upgrade to Windows 11 (original release) to fail.
• We fixed an issue that displays Japanese characters incorrectly in PowerShell.
• We fixed an issue that affects the Cloud Clipboard service and prevents syncing between machines after a period of inactivity.
• We fixed an issue that fails to hide the Windows Sandbox startup screen after Sandbox starts to run.
• We fixed an issue that causes a device that has a Japanese system locale to stop working when you disable end-user-defined characters (EUDCs).
• We enabled the InternetExplorerModeEnableSavePageAs Group Policy. For more information, see Microsoft Edge Browser Policy Documentation.
• We provided the ability to use a network proxy during Universal Print operations.
• We fixed an issue that might cause playback of consecutive video clips to fail in games that use DirectX 12 (DX12).
• We fixed an issue that causes certain games to stop working if they use the XAudio API to play sound effects.
• We fixed an issue that affects some certificates chains to Root Certification Authorities that are members of the Microsoft Root Certification Program. For these certificates, the certificate chain status can be, “This certificate was revoked by its certification authority”.
• We fixed an issue that prevents the use of Encrypted File System (EFS) files over a Web-based Distributed Authoring and Versioning (WebDAV) connection.
• We fixed an issue that causes a domain controller to incorrectly write Key Distribution Center (KDC) event 21 in the System event log. This occurs when the KDC successfully processes a Kerberos Public Key Cryptography for Initial Authentication (PKINIT) authentication request with a self-signed certificate for key trust scenarios (Windows Hello for Business and Device Authentication).
• We fixed an issue that prevents Bluetooth from reconnecting to some audio devices after you restart the devices.
• We fixed an issue that occurs when the Active Directory Lightweight Directory Service (LDS) resets the password for userProxy objects. The password reset fails with an error such as, “00000005: SvcErr: DSID-03380C23, problem 5003 (WILL_NOT_PERFORM), data 0”.
• We fixed an issue that causes Microsoft NTLM authentication using an external trust to fail. This issue occurs when a domain controller that contains the January 11, 2022 or later Windows update services the authentication request, is not in a root domain, and does not hold the Global Catalog role. The affected operations might log the following errors:
  • The security database has not been started.
  • The domain was in the wrong state to perform the security operation.
  • 0xc00000dd (STATUS_INVALID_DOMAIN_STATE).
• We fixed an issue that causes the LocalUsersAndGroups configuration service provider (CSP) policy to fail when you modify the built-in Administrators group. This issue occurs if the local Administrator account isn’t specified in the membership list when you perform a replace operation.
• We fixed an issue in which malformed XML inputs might cause an error in DeviceEnroller.exe. This prevents CSPs from being delivered to the device until you restart the device or correct the XML.

• We fixed an issue that might cause Windows 11 (original release) to stop working when you install an application and there is no network connectivity.

• We updated the Start menu to display Windows PowerShell when you right-click (Win + X) the Start button after you have uninstalled Windows Terminal.
• We changed the name of the Your Phone app to Phone Link on the Settings page.
• We fixed an issue that caused the Microsoft Surface Dial customization settings page to stop working.

The official blog post is linked here.

Update: Seems Microsoft made a mistake with the build number. We've corrected it in our article.

Windows 11 Build 22000.776 (KB5014668) fixes OS upgrade fail, DX12 issue, and more

• Tesla's web browser, in particular, is "trash," he said.

• Tesla is regarded as a leader in car software.

Elon Musk isn't happy with Tesla's in-car software.

The electric automaker is regarded as a leader in car software, selling vehicles with sprawling touchscreens that can run video games, play YouTube videos, and control everything from a car's air vents to its windshield wipers. Still, Musk says there's room for improvement, particularly when it comes to the company's "trash" web browser.

"I think we've got a lot of work to do actually with the basic software in the car. Our web browser sucks," Musk said during an interview posted to the Tesla Owners Silicon Valley YouTube channel on Tuesday. "If you try to use the web browser in the car, it takes a long time to load and it's a trash browser. It's worse than some iPad from five years ago, by a lot."

Musk noted that some owners have complained about Tesla's user interface, which got a controversial update late last year.

In many ways, Tesla has been ahead of the curve when it comes to in-car software. It pioneered over-the-air updates, which allow it remotely upgrade vehicles, just like Apple does with its iPhones. It equipped the Model S sedan with a large touchscreen in 2009, before Apple's iPad popularized tablets. Now big screens that control most of a vehicle's main functions are becoming the norm.

Another potential area of improvement: Musk said Tesla should give rear passengers their own audio system linked to the screen in the back seat, "so that people can listen to music in the front and not get blasted by the YouTube kid show audio in the front, which is currently the situation."

"There's a bunch of stuff like that that we need to fix," he added. Still, Musk said Tesla's "overwhelming focus" is achieving fully autonomous driving, which he has promised for years and has yet to deliver.

Source

Microsoft also reminded users that Internet Explorer 11 has retired, and the legendary browser no longer receives any support from Microsoft. We have a dedicated article providing all you need to know about the end of support for IE 11.

What is new in Edge 104.0.1287.1?

Added Features:

• Added a display notification when Microsoft Rewards points increase. 

   

• Added an option to provide translation information with feedback for Android.

   

• Added a new policy to manage mini menu settings.

   

Improved Reliability:

• Improved various UX issues seen while searching on the Edge Bar.
• Improved reliability for importing favorites from an html file.
• Improved the displayed icon on InPrivate browsing page on mobile.
• Improved grammar suggestions by adding a header in the submenu.
• Enabled the ability to return to the new tab page news feed after opening an article by pressing the back button.

Changed Behavior:

• Improved accessibility for screen readers by changing the narrator announcement from "item, selected" to "item, checked/unchecked" after invoking a checkbox menu item. 
• Enabled the ability to return to the new tab page news feed after opening an article by pressing the back button.
• Fixed a crash when selecting an option on the permissions notification on mobile. 
• Improved discoverability of restored bookmarks, instead of putting them into the Other Favorites they now go into a folder called Restored Favorites

For some reason, Microsoft has not provided a list of known issues for this week's release.

Microsoft plans to release Edge 104 in the Beta channel during the week of June 28, 2022. Look out for the update to arrive in the Stable channel during the week of August 4, 2022.

Edge Dev 104.0.1287.1 adds Microsoft Rewards notifications and various fixes

WhatsApp Beta UWP is finally getting support for reactions with the latest update. It's no different than what you've already seen on the Android and iOS clients. You'll see an emoticon beside every message received, and you can react to it using a number of emojis, including Heart, Thumbs up, Face with mouth open, Face with tears of joy, Person with folded hands, and Crying face.

Reactions are not just about letting users react with certain emojis. WhatsApp also allows users to see who reacted to their messages. This is particularly helpful when you're messaging on various groups. You can see the number of people who reacted to your messages just by clicking on the emojis.

Notably, this is not a phased rollout, which means anyone running WhatsApp Beta version 2.2223.11.0 can react using the aforementioned emojis. Meta will introduce more emojis and skin tones sometime in the future, and it's quite likely that they will be available to Android and iOS users first. But it ideally shouldn't take more than a month to bring those changes to the UWP beta app as well.

You can download the WhatsApp Beta UWP app from the Microsoft Store or click here to go to the app download page directly.

WhatsApp Beta UWP gets reactions feature in latest update

It was Aug. 16, 1995. “Waterfalls” by TLC was the No. 1 song in the country. Bill Clinton was in the White House. And Microsoft introduced a new way to surf the web: Internet Explorer.

It was buggy and slow, many said. But it was always there. Until it wasn’t. On Wednesday, the web browser, loved and loathed by a generation, was officially retired, swept into the dustbin of internet history.

The occasion stirred surprisingly strong feelings of nostalgia for the 1990s and early 2000s, an era when many first came to know the online world through stuttering dial-up connections, chat rooms and long-gone social media sites like Friendster.

Now that Internet Explorer is no more, many pined for a time when the little blue icon with the lowercase “e” was their escape route out of childhood bedrooms, college dorm rooms and office cubicles.

“Even though I don’t use it anymore, I’m still going to miss the idea of it,” said Brett Babino, 27, an Amazon worker from Port Arthur, Texas, who was 11 when he started using Internet Explorer to do schoolwork and play online games like Club Penguin.

“It was slow,” Mr. Babino said, “but it got me through a lot of things.”

He was among many who were greeting the passing of Internet Explorer on Wednesday by fondly recalling how essential it once was, despite its many faults. Memes and jokes featuring tombstones and grim reapers abounded.

“Today marks the official end of Microsoft’s support for Internet Explorer,” Marques Brownlee, a web video producer, wrote on Twitter. “RIP to the #1 Chrome installer of all time.”

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab offered its condolences.

“Rest in peace, Internet Explorer,” it wrote on Twitter. “You’ll be missed. We feel old.”

Michael L. Nelson, a computer science professor at Old Dominion University, said that Microsoft’s decision to shut down Internet Explorer and move users to its newer browser, Edge, “marks the end of an era.”

Internet Explorer’s inclusion in the ubiquitous Windows operating system and the requirement that it be used on certain government websites made the browser an inescapable part of daily life for millions, he said.

It also hastened the demise of Netscape Navigator, the world’s first commercial web browser.

“Internet Explorer was certainly not the first browser, but its inclusion in Windows back in the mid-1990s really helped bring the web to a very large user base,” and made the internet more widely accessible, Professor Nelson said.

Even so, he said, “It was never a great browser.”

“If you wanted to do high-performance stuff or you were on the cutting edge, anything from Microsoft was like driving around in your mom’s Toyota Camry,” Professor Nelson said. “It did the job but nobody got excited about a really low-performance, unlovable browser.”

In a blog post about the retirement of the browser, Sean Lyndersay, general manager of Microsoft Edge Enterprise, said on Wednesday that, despite its remarkable role in the evolution of the web, “Internet Explorer’s reputation today is, deservedly, one of a product from an older era — quirky in behavior and lacking the security of a modern browser.”

Over the next few months, users who open Internet Explorer will be redirected to Microsoft Edge with “IE mode,” he wrote.

“Eventually, Internet Explorer will be disabled permanently as part of a future Windows update, at which point the Internet Explorer icons on users’ devices will be removed,” he wrote. He called Edge a “faster, more secure and more modern browser.”

In the 1990s, Microsoft was forced to defend Internet Explorer in a major antitrust case brought by the Justice Department. In 2001, the department announced that it would no longer seek to split the company in two or contend that Microsoft had illegally tied Internet Explorer to its Windows operating system.

In the years since, many Internet Explorer users switched to Google Chrome, Firefox or Safari, finding them faster, safer and less likely to crash. When Mr. Babino downloaded Chrome in 2015, he said, he found that it offered more features and extensions and that it was “more aesthetically pleasing.”
He never clicked on Internet Explorer again.

“It just faded out,” he said.

Source

ISO files let you install the newest Dev update without updating an existing installation. It is a convenient way to get to the bleeding edge of the Windows Insider program on a virtual machine or another PC.

You can download Windows 11 build 25140 ISO files from the official website. Note that you need to be a Windows Insider and log in with your Microsoft account to get the required download link. Another thing to remember is that Windows 11 preview versions require activation with a genuine Windows key, just like the stable release.

The full release notes for build 25140 are available in our dedicated post. It also contains the known issues of the update we recommend checking out before installing.

Microsoft releases ISO files for the latest 25140 build from Dev channel

The new build adds plenty of new changes and improvements on top of bug fixes. The full changelog for Build 25140 is given below:

Changes and Improvements

[General]

• Euphemia typeface covers most languages that use the Canadian Syllabic script including various Cree orthographies, Inuktitut, and the Carrier/Dakelh script (dulkw’ahke). In the latest Insider builds, we’ve updated this font to improve the legibility and screen rendering of over 200 characters at various sizes. We’ve also added new glyphs to support Unicode 14 characters for the Nattilik language of the Canadian arctic.

Fixes

[File Explorer]

• Fixed an issue which was leading some people to unexpectedly see error 0x80070026 when copying files from network drives.
• Fixed an issue where the active tab color didn’t match the command bar below it.
• Fixed an issue where dragging to rearrange tabs wasn’t working sometimes.
• Fixed an issue which could cause artifacts in the windows thumbnail preview in the taskbar if File Explorer was maximized and you used WIN + M to minimize it.

[Settings]

• If you go to rename a drive label in System > Storage > Disks & Volumes, the current drive name will now be prepopulated in the dialog.

[Input]

• Fixed an issue where selecting English (New Zealand) in OOBE was unexpectedly leading to the Arabic (101) keyboard getting selected.
• Setting language bar hotkeys for switching input directly to specific non-IME input method should work now.
• Some languages don’t support text to speech. When an admin user wanted to install one of those languages using the new Install-Language CopyToSettings command, some settings such as new user account locale, Input (Keyboard), and UPLL (User Preferred Language List) were not getting updated. This issue has now been fixed.
• Some languages don’t support text-to-speech. When an admin user tried to install one of those languages using the new Install-Language CopyToSettings command, some settings such as new user account locale, Input (Keyboard), and UPLL (User Preferred Language List) were not getting updated. This issue has now been fixed.
• Fixed an issue causing Batang, BatangChe, Gungsuh, and GungsuhChe fonts to not render Korean correctly when using Office online apps when these fonts were not locally present on your PC.

[Task Manager]

• Fixed a crash that could happen when switching modes in pages other than the Processes page.
• We made a small adjustment to the intensity of the colors used in the heatmap on the Processes page.

[Other]

• Fixed an issue where calls to CopyAcceleratorTable and CreateAcceleratorTable would fail if the LPACCEL parameter was the address of an odd numbered index into an array of ACCEL structs.
• Fixed an issue with x64 emulation on ARM64 which could result in certain apps crashing on launch with error code 0xc0000409.
• Fixed an issue causing audio to stop playing in certain apps after a minute.

NOTE: Some fixes noted here in Insider Preview builds from the Dev Channel may make their way into the servicing updates for the released version of Windows 11.

The known issues in Build 25140 are:

[General]

• Windows Insiders on Surface Pro X devices will hit a black screen attempting to resume from hibernate on this build. You will need to power cycle (long power button shutdown) to get back into the device. It is recommended Insiders on these devices pause flighting until we release a build with this fix.
• We are investigating reports that the Mica material and Acrylic blur effect is not rendering correct in OS surfaces like the Start menu, Notification Center and other areas.
• We’re investigating reports that shutting down via the Start menu isn’t working for some Insiders and is unexpectedly rebooting instead.
• Some games that use Easy Anti-Cheat may crash or cause your PC to bugcheck.

[File Explorer]

• The up arrow is misaligned in File Explorer tabs. This will be fixed in a future update.
• [NEW] We’re investigating reports that launching File Explorer in certain ways when using dark mode (for example, from the command line) is showing the body of File Explorer unexpectedly in light mode.

[Widgets]

• [NEW] We’re working on the fix for an issue causing Widgets preferences (temperature units and pinned widgets) to unexpectedly reset to default.

[Live captions]

• Certain apps in full screen (e.g., video players) prevent live captions from being visible.
• Certain apps positioned near the top of the screen and closed before live captions is run will re-launch behind the live captions window positioned at top. Use the system menu (ALT + Spacebar) while the app has focus to move the app’s window further down.

You can find the official blog post here.

Latest Windows 11 Dev build 25140 fixes FIle Explorer, Task Manager bugs, and more

Microsoft bundled IE11 with Windows 8.1 as the modern, default web browser for Windows. Although it never quite reached the (current) heights of Chrome, it was the second-most used desktop browser back in 2014, just behind IE8. Of course, things have changed quite a lot since then with the advent of Microsoft Edge in 2015 as well.

Edge was bundled as the default browser with Windows 10 in 2015 but it has gone through quite a few iterations as well. The latest major version released in 2020 shifted to Chromium, which is the same open-source project that Google Chrome is based on.

But circling back to IE11, the desktop application is being retired across almost every consumer version of Windows, except the following:

• Internet Explorer mode in Microsoft Edge
• Internet Explorer platform (MSHTML/Trident), including WebOC
• Internet Explorer 11 desktop application on:
  • Windows 8.1
  • Windows 7 Extended Security Updates (ESU)
  • Windows 10 Server SAC (all versions)
  • Windows 10 IoT Long-Term Servicing Channel (LTSC) (all versions)
  • Windows 10 Server LTSC (all versions)
  • Windows 10 client LTSC (all versions)

This means that Internet Explorer 11 installed on all other SKUs will no longer receive support or security updates. The browser isn't installed on Windows 11 either.

Naturally, Microsoft has recommended that all users should migrate to Microsoft Edge. If you're dependent on certain legacy websites and software that only work with Internet Explorer, Microsoft has also included a feature called "IE mode" in Edge to tackle this use-case.

IE mode in Edge is powered by the MSHTML (Trident) engine also utilized by IE11, so it should work for fringe use-cases like the one described above. If you don't know how to enable IE mode in Edge, check out our guide (which also highlights a third-party alternative) here.

It is important to note that while iexplore.exe will remain on devices, Microsoft will be phasing out usage in two stages. The first stage will follow a quality-driven process to redirect IE usage to Microsoft Edge automatically. Microsoft has emphasized that Windows Update won't be powering this redirection so it is futile to avoid installing updates just so you can bypass this process. Microsoft will also prompt you that "The future of Internet Explorer is in Microsoft Edge".The entire procedure may take a few months.

The second retirement phase kicks in immediately after the first one ends. It will permanently disable IE on all affected Windows SKUs through Windows Updates (an optional "C" update follow by a "B" Cumulative Update). If you want it to be disabled at your own pace, check out Microsoft's guide here.

Microsoft has strictly stated that Internet Explorer 11 should not be uninstalled completely as it powers IE mode in Edge.

That said, you should know that IE mode isn't supported forever either. Its end of support date for various SKUs of Windows are as follows:

For organizations, IE Group Policies will continue to work in IE mode but you can reach out to the App Assure team if you face any issues. The same is also recommended for organizations facing problems with loading their sites in IE mode.

Finally, many sites including Microsoft's own and those owned by other companies have been dropping support for IE11 steadily over the past few months, so it's better to completely move your workflow to an alternative supported browser sooner rather than later.

End of an era: Internet Explorer 11 has retired, here is what you need to know

This was revealed on Wednesday, June 15, the day Internet Explorer has finally reached its end of life for the Windows 10 semi-annual channel (SAC) servicing option.

As BleepingComputer previously reported, the now-retired web browser will start redirecting users to the new Chromium-based Microsoft Edge when launching the Internet Explorer 11 desktop application.

"Users will still see the Internet Explorer icon on their devices (such as on the taskbar or in the Start menu) but if they click to open Internet Explorer, Microsoft Edge will open instead with easy access to IE mode," said the General Manager for Microsoft Edge Enterprise Sean Lyndersay today.

"Eventually, Internet Explorer will be disabled permanently as part of a future Windows Update, at which point the Internet Explorer icons on users' devices will be removed." [emphasis ours]

During this redirection process, the users' data (including settings, favorites, and passwords) will be imported into Microsoft Edge to make the switch easier.

Microsoft will also add a "Reload in IE mode" button to Edge's toolbar to help users quickly launch sites requesting to be opened in Internet Explorer using IE mode.

Internet Explorer has been automatically launching Microsoft Edge when visiting incompatible sites starting with October 2020.

The list of incompatible sites (managed by Microsoft) currently contains 1,427 sites, including Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Google Drive, Microsoft Teams, and many others.

Microsoft Edge is the future

While officially retired from multiple Windows 10 versions and not shipping with Windows 11, Internet Explorer will still be available on Windows 7 ESU, Windows 8.1, and all versions of Windows 10 LTSC client, IoT, and Server.

On systems running these Windows versions, the web browser will continue receiving technical support and security updates for the lifecycle of the Windows version it runs on.

Microsoft has been encouraging customers to switch from Internet Explorer to Microsoft Edge for years—you can learn more about IE mode and how to make the switch in this getting started guide.

"Customers are encouraged to move to Microsoft Edge with IE mode. IE mode enables backward compatibility and will be supported through at least 2029," Redmond says.

To enable IE mode in Microsoft Edge, you have to go to edge://settings/defaultbrowser, enable the 'Allow sites to be reloaded in Internet Explorer' option, and restart the web browser.

In August 2020, Microsoft first announced plans to ditch support for Internet Explorer 11 web browsers in Windows 10 and Microsoft 365, with an official announcement of the retirement issued on May 19, 2021.

Microsoft also discontinued IE support in Teams on November 30, 2020, and ended support across Microsoft 365 apps and services on August 17, 2021.

Other Microsoft apps and services have also ended support for Internet Explorer over the last years—a complete list is available here.

Microsoft: Windows update to permanently disable Internet Explorer

Today, Nvidia released a new driver for users with supported GeForce graphics cards. Version 516.40 WHQL release is now available for download from the GeForce Experience app or the Nvidia website.

The latest update adds day-zero optimizations for Fall Guys: Free For All, which launches on June 21, 2022, as a free-to-play title in the Epic Games Store. You will also get Nvidia Reflex support in ICARUS and ray tracing support in Jurassic World Evolution 2, Resident Evil 2, Resident Evil 3, and Resident Evil 7.

Here are the issues Nvidia fixed in driver 516.40:

• [Enscape] Shadows may not be rendered correctly.
• [Advanced Optimus] Brightness settings are not getting applied correctly on certain Lenovo notebooks.
• Club 3D CAC-1085 dongle limited to maximum resolution of 4K at 60Hz.

Before installing the update, check out the list of the known issues in version 516.40:

• Toggling HDR on and off in-game causes game stability issues when non-native resolution is used.
• [GeForce RTX 3090 Ti] HP Reverb G2/Oculus Rift S/Pimax 8Kx is not detected.
• Videos played back in Microsoft Edge may appear green if NVIDIA Image Scaling is enabled upon resuming from hibernate or booting with fastboot.
• Release 515 Driver for Windows, Version 516.40 RN-08399-516.40_v01
• [DirectX 12] Shadowplay recordings may appear over exposed when Use HDR is enabled from the Windows display settings.
• [Assassin's Creed Origins] Game displays flicker when character is under water near a boat.
• Monitor may briefly flicker on waking from display sleep if DSR/DLDSR is enabled.

Desktop GPUs:

GeForce Game Ready Driver (US) Download: Windows 11, 10 – DCH

Notebook GPUs:

GeForce Game Ready Driver (US) Download: Windows 11, 10 – DCH

Nvidia 516.40 WHQL adds support for Fall Guys: Free for All and ray-tracing in several games

This is a patch release to fix issues in v0.59.0 to fix a few bugs we deemed important for stability based on incoming rates. See v0.59.0 for full release notes.

Changelog:

• #18657: FancyZones not working with windows showing in all desktops is fixed.
• #18663: Messages showing there was an error updating should no longer appear when PowerToys is up-to-date.
• #18712: On some systems OOBE Windows renders a bit too big, so we made the window resizable.
• #18696: Added a setting to disable the search delay in PowerToys Run, as some users preferred the old behavior.
• #18679: A FancyZones bug where windows were not snapping after switching layouts is fixed.
• #18761: PowerToys Run is not getting the default web browser under some conditions. Potential fixes and added logs are included.
• #18842: Upgraded the Windows App SDK runtime to 1.1.1, containing the newest fixes.

You can download PowerToys 0.59 from the Microsoft Store using this link or the official repository on GitHub. If you already have PowerToys installed on your computer, the app will notify you about available updates, or you can manually update from settings. As noted above, you can also learn about changes in the previous 0.59 release.

If you are unfamiliar with PowerToys, it is a set of advanced utilities provided by Microsoft and the open-source developer community. It contains various tools, such as an app launcher, bulk file renamer, color picker, a utility to customize shortcuts, etc. Microsoft frequently updates PowerToys with new features and fixes.

Microsoft PowerToys 0.59.1 fixes FancyZones bugs, PowerToys Run and more

One way to help secure embedded and IoT deployments is with a secured operating system, such as Canonical’s Ubuntu Core. The Ubuntu Core provides an optimized version of the open-source Ubuntu Linux operating system for smaller device footprints, using an approach that puts applications into containers. On June 15, Ubuntu Core 22 became generally available, providing users with new capabilities to help accelerate performance and lock down security.

Ubuntu Core 22 is based on the Ubuntu 22.04 Linux operating system, which is Canonical’s flagship Linux distribution that’s made available for cloud, server and desktop users. Rather than being a general purpose OS, Ubuntu Core makes use of the open-source Snap container technology that was originally developed by Canonical to run applications. With Snaps, an organization can configure which applications should run in a specific IoT or embedded device and lock down the applications for security. Snaps provide a cryptographically authenticated approach for application updates.

Canonical isn’t the only Linux vendor with an IoT strategy. In recent months, IBM’s Red Hat business unit has been growing its approach for enabling support for edge devices and IoT. Suse Linux has also been active in the space and recently updated its flagship enterprise platform.

Real-time Linux brings more predictability to IoT

One of the highlights of the Ubuntu Core 22 update is support for the real-time Linux kernel as a beta feature.

“Real time” is a class of software and computing technology that occurs in a deterministic time frame. That is, it takes exactly the same amount of time for an action to execute every time, so if a user pushes a button in a car, it executes the same time, every time.

“It is amazing the amount of industries that are actually requiring real time,” David Beamonte Arbués, Ubuntu Core product manager, told VentureBeat. “In years past, it was mostly something that only automotive and medical applications needed, and now all kinds of applications are also requiring and demanding real time.”

A challenge with real time is that there needs to be very low latency for process execution in an operating system without interruptions. In the past, most real-time operating systems ran on bare metal, but with Ubuntu Core 22 it’s running in a containerized environment. Arbués explained that the Snaps system uses the same compute resources as the actual operating system, without introducing unnecessary overhead for resources.

Remodeling IoT devices is about to get easier

A common challenge with many IoT devices is that they contain a fixed set of applications. Prior to Ubuntu Core 2022, a device manufacturer would have predefined a set of Snap applications that can run on a device and that would be it.

Ubuntu Core 2022 introduces the concept of “remodeling,” which enables IoT vendors to modify the list of predefined applications running on a device. Additionally, the remodeling capability will make it easier for users of prior versions for Ubuntu Core to update to new versions as a remodel operation.
Canonical has also introduced a feature called Validation Sets, which helps to ensure that Snap applications that are related and dependent on each other are grouped together. The grouping is done to help confirm that as one application is updated, others within the same set will also be updated to a corresponding version that will enable compatibility.

Ensuring compatibility and enabling remodeling is critically important for IoT devices that could be in use for long periods of time. It’s also why Canonical offers up to a decade of support for Ubuntu Core.

“We can have up to 10 years of support for the whole operating system,” Arbués said. “I think that that’s something very important for these kinds of use cases where devices probably are going to be in the field for more than 10 years.”

Source

Today, Microsoft has taken a significant step in this direction with the release of the first native ARM64 version of Visual Studio, on Windows 11 only.

This build is available via Visual Studio 2022 17.3 Preview 2 and supports the following workloads:

• Desktop development with C++ (for MSBuild-based projects)
• .NET desktop development (WinForms, WPF) using both .NET Framework, and modern .NET.
• NET and Web development

Microsoft has noted that the aforementioned workloads are in preview for now but should hit general availability (GA) by the end of this calendar year.

Starting off with native developers using the Microsoft Visual C++ (MSVC) toolset, the compiler will run natively rather than through emulation. Microsoft has noted that many C++ libraries, including Vcpkg, already natively support ARM64.

For managed developers, Microsoft has highlighted that .NET 6 has natively supported ARM64 since launch and this release works on extending support to the .NET Framework in the form of .NET Framework 4.8.1 runtime and SDK. It is important to note that .NET Framework 4.8.1 will be available by default with Windows 11 version 22H2 launching later this year and will be rolled out to previous operating systems sometime in the future too. This preview supports Windows Forms, WPF, and Web apps but there are plans to expand it to cover Windows App SDK, .NET MAUI, and Universal Windows Platform (UWP) too.

You can download Visual Studio 2022 17.3 Preview 2 from Microsoft's portal here. Installations will be handled through a single installer which will automatically download the appropriate version of the IDE for you depending upon your system architecture. That said, if you want to try out the ARM64 variant, make sure you are running Windows 11 on the hardware and have uninstalled any previous versions of Visual Studio.

The first native ARM64 version of Visual Studio is now available on Windows 11

Improvements

This security update includes improvements that were a part of update KB5014019 (released May 24, 2022) and also addresses the following issues:

• This update contains miscellaneous security improvements to internal OS functionality. No additional issues were documented for this release.

Windows 11 servicing stack update – 22000.702

This update makes quality improvements to the servicing stack, which is the component that installs Windows updates. Servicing stack updates (SSU) ensure that you have a robust and reliable servicing stack so that your devices can receive and install Microsoft updates.

Known issues

This update will be delivered via Windows Update to users. There’s no action that you need to take as it’ll be downloaded and installed automatically. If you would like to download the standalone package to install the update on offline systems, you can get it here.

Windows 11 Patch Tuesday update (KB5014697) for June arrives