On Sun, 21 Feb 2016 12:25:56 -0500, "Mayayana"
wrote:
| I was trying to install IE11 recently
| on Win7-64 or on a Win7-32 laptop. I couldn't get it
| to work on either one! Microsoft's own browser, which
| hardly runs anywhere to begin with.
|
| Hardy anywhere? It has 25% of the browser market.
| I use it.
|
You have my sympathy. 
IE has anywhere from 10% to 50% share, depending on
who you ask.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_...f_web_browsers
But that's IE, not IE11. IE11 can only run on Win7/8/10.
It won't install on XP. (Win10 only recently passed XP
in usage. XP is still popular. So not being able to run IE11
on XP is a rather pitiful statement about Microsoft.)
And it won't install on any other operating system. Given
that Microsoft can only manage to get it to run on 7/8/10,
I don't think it's too much to ask that the install should
be smooth.
The reason I wanted to test with IE11 was because MS
broke compatibility in a big way with IE11 and Edge
IE11 and Edge are two totally different browsers Edge is a "work in
process". Ie11 has built in compatability support and can open and
display any webpage that could be opened or viewed with 8, 9, or 10.
You may have to tell the browser to use compatability mode - but it is
there, available, and simple to implement.
. They've
broken most of the technologies that worked in IE4-10.
I wanted to see how my own website pages would work.
It turned out they don't work at all and would require a total,
complex rewrite if I want to support IE11/Edge. Not only
would they need to be rewritten, but IE11/Edge no longer
support "quirks mode", which allowed one to write webpages
that would look the same in IE5 to IE10. Without quirks
mode each version of IE is incompatible with the rest and
each needs its own special code exceptions in order to
display properly.
Never depend on ANY OS or browser to continue to support
"undoccumented calls" or "undoccumented features"
A lot of programmers get way to "smart" for their own good.
Given the scale of such a task, I decided,
instead, to just show an apology/error page for IE11/Edge.
That page suggests that the visitor use another
browser or, if that's not possible and they're desperate,
that they disable style and reload the page. I get an average
of about 400 unique visitors on a weekday. Of those, I
estimate 250-300 may be real people. Altogether I'm seeing
about 3-10 visitors per day using IE11 or Edge. Nearly all
of those are using IE11 on Win7. (Probably a third of those
reload the page in another browser within seconds, indicating
that they don't depend on IE.) My site is mainly geared
toward Windows "power users", scripters, programmers
and IT people. Given all that, I'd say that IE11 is not a
big factor online. Non-techie people don't generally update
things. Techie people know better than to use IE online.
So the people actually using IE11 are mostly Microsoft
fans who are somewhat handy.
Just put a note on the page saying if the page does not open properly
in IE11 to use compatability mode.
With Edge, you are totally on your own - I think Microsoft made a big
mistake deploying Edge before it was anywhere near ready for prime
time. It's the only part of W10 that is not better than or equal to
W7, W8, or W8.1 in my eyes.