Microsoft ending support for Internet Explorer 11 from December onwards

[Graham Quince]

Internet Explorer 11 is no longer a safe browser for your data.

It’s official! Between December 2020 and April 2021, Microsoft will be ending support for Internet Explorer 11 (IE11).  From December onwards, whilst it will still be accessible, some features will stop working and crucially the end of support from Microsoft means IE11 is no longer a safe place for your data.  

IE11 was released in 2013, and Microsoft superseded it less than two years later, when Edge became the default browser for Windows in 2015.  Today it accounts for just 1.4% of internet traffic.

What does this mean for my school’s Frog?
Ideally your users should not be using IE11 anyway, but some may be using it from home.  As the browser itself is no longer supported by Microsoft, there may be some features within Frog that stop working as a result. We will be unable to apply fixes for them to work in IE11 as this will affect their performance in modern, secure browsers which need to be used.  

What do I need to do?
Relay this message to your teachers, students, parents, governors with the recommendation that if they are using Internet Explorer 11 they should switch to Microsoft Edge, Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox or one of the many other alternatives that work safely and securely in Frog. As Internet Explorer is not on tablets, smart phones or Mac computers, this will only affect Windows computer users.
 

[Graham Quince]

I've also been experimenting with the HTML widget, and this code can be set to email you when someone accesses Frog via IE11:

<script>
function GetIEVersion() {
  var sAgent = window.navigator.userAgent;
  var Idx = sAgent.indexOf("MSIE");

  if (Idx > 0) { // If IE, return version number.
    return parseInt(sAgent.substring(Idx+ 5, sAgent.indexOf(".", Idx)));
  }  else if (!!navigator.userAgent.match(/Trident\/7\./)) { // If IE 11 then look for Updated user agent string.
    return 11;
  } else {
    return 0; // It is not IE
  }

}

if (GetIEVersion() > 0) {
    var user = FrogOS ? FrogOS.getUser() : this.getUser();
    FrogOS.fdp({
        url: 'email/sendmessage',
        path: '/api/fdp/1/',
        type: 'POST',
        data: { 
            subject: "Internet Explorer User detected",
            message: user.displayname+" ( username: "+user.username+" ) accessed Frog via Internet Explorer.  You might want to contact them to inform them about it being deprecated.",
            to: "[YOUR EMAIL ADDRESS]",
            cc: '',
            bcc: '',
            send_individual_messages: false
        }
    }).done(function(response) {
        //console.log("done");
    }).fail(function(e) {
       // Report Error
       console.log("failed");
    });
}
</script>

You may need to grant Email FDP access in Groups & Policies.

 

The first part of the code uses browser detection / detects the browser using UserAgent 

Edited October 19, 2021 by Graham Quince
Added text to make it easier to find when searching the forums