This isn't really that off-topic a question, but I just didn't know where else to post it - so I'll start with a cheesy attempt at humor to provide some background info and keep this off-topic post on-topic.
Dinosaurs are a cool subject, and about as off-topic as you can get, so let's talk dinos. Microsoft's Internet Explorer is a dinosaur from the Dialupzoic era. In these prehistoric, times the only other creature in its territory was another dinosaur known as Netscape. To the primitive humans that existed back then (like me), these ancient web browsers were considered really cool, right next to AOL Instant Messaging and Solitaire. Over time, Netscape evolved into the creature we know today as a Firefox. But Netscape went extinct ages ago, though you can probably still find its remains on display somewhere. But while Netscape went the way of the dodo, Internet Explorer survived! Even after Microsoft tried to kill this enormous reptile like a warrior trying to "slay the dragon", IE lives on! Somehow, the browser I built my first website on in 1997 is alive and well, even on Windows 10! Kind of like how the T-Rex evolved into the chicken, and... apes still exist today... but that's a subject for another day.
Anyway, ridiculous dinosaur analogies aside, the question remains: why is IE still around? Well the short answer is it was created with one very important feature that no other browser has: it exposes its HTML DOM to external programs and scripts using COM. Netscape didn't have that feature (I think), and modern browsers don't have it either. Now from a security standpoint it's obvious that this was kind of a dumb idea. Get someone to download your program and you can do pretty much anything you want with their browser. So it's no shock that no other browser would ever do that.
But the fact that IE did do it opened up new possibilities for legit developers. It was an ActiveX control, so it could be embedded in Win32 GUIs like any other ActiveX control. There are still enterprise applications that use IE in this way (I've seen several at work). It also meant native code could be called directly from an IE window, making IE a great UI framework for native apps - even better than similar (and more modern) solutions like NW.js and Electron. In those frameworks, you can still run native code from the DOM, but you have to compile it first. Not so in IE. Microsoft even supported this general idea of using IE for UI - back in the dino dayz, HTML Applications ("HTAs") were totally a thing; and like IE, HTAs have "survived" all the way to Windows 10.
So, if you've made it this far down, either you're actually interested in this or I'm actually a half-decent writer (lol). So let me ask you again: is IE really on the way out? I've Googled myself stupid and still don't have an answer, so I figured maybe there isn't one. Sure, Microsoft dropped updates on IE ages ago and is promoting the heck out of its "new" browser Edge, but that doesn't mean IE is dead. It's still embedded in GUIs, HTAs are still supported, and it's still my favorite UI framework for AHK. But the question isn't "is IE dead", so much as "is IE on the way out?". So... what do you think?
