ＩＥよ、安らかに 韓国に「墓」

【ＡＦＰ＝時事】韓国南部・慶州に、今週２７年の歴史に幕を下ろしたインターネット閲覧ソフト（ブラウザー）「インターネット・エクスプローラー（ＩＥ）」の「墓」が建てられ、話題になっている。（写真はカフェの屋上に建てられたＩＥの墓。ジュン・キヨンさん提供）
　墓を建てたのはＩＴエンジニアのジュン・キヨンさん（３８）。ジュンさんの兄弟が経営するカフェの屋上に設置された墓にはＩＥのロゴと、「他のブラウザーをダウンロードするには便利なツールだった」と、碑文が彫られている。墓の画像はインターネットで拡散された。
　ＩＥはかつて世界で圧倒的なシェアを占めていたが、近年は遅くて不具合が多いと酷評されていた。ただ、インターネットの速度が世界最速級の韓国には、ＩＥが深く根付いていた。
　２０１４年ごろまではインターネットバンキングやオンラインショッピングなどにマイクロソフト製プラグイン「ＡｃｔｉｖｅＸ」を使わなければならなかったため、ＩＥは必須だった。
　現地メディアによると、政府機関のサイトの多くはつい最近までＩＥでの閲覧を想定してつくられていた。ＩＥを使わなければ閲覧できないサイトもあった。
　ソフトウエアエンジニアでウェブデベロッパーでもあるジュンさんはＡＦＰに対し、職場では常にＩＥの互換性の問題に「苦しめられていた」と語った。
　サファリやクロームといった他のブラウザーで見栄えが良いウェブサイトが、ＩＥではおかしく見えることが多く、互換性を確保するために何時間も余計に働かなくてはならなかったという。
　ジュンさんはＩＥのサービス終了に「歓喜」すると同時に、ＩＥの全盛期を知る人間として純粋に懐かしく、感慨深いものもあると語った。
　反響を受け、兄弟で屋上の墓をいつまでも残しておくつもりだと話した。【翻訳編集ＡＦＰＢＢＮｅｗｓ】
〔ＡＦＰ＝時事〕（2022/06/20-13:21）

A South Korean engineer who built a grave for Internet Explorer -- photos of which quickly went viral -- told AFP Friday that the now-defunct web browser had made his life a misery.
South Korea, which has some of the world's fastest average internet speeds, remained bizarrely wedded to Microsoft's Internet Explorer, which was retired by the company earlier this week after 27 years.
In honour of the browser's death, a gravestone marked with its signature e logo was set up on the rooftop of a cafe in South Korea's southern city of Gyeongju by engineer Kiyoung Jung, 38.
He was a good tool to use to download other browsers, the gravestone's inscription reads.
Images of Jung's joke tombstone quickly spread online, with users of social media site Reddit upvoting it tens of thousands of times.
Once dominant globally, Internet Explorer was widely reviled in recent years due to its slowness and glitches.
But in South Korea, it was mandatory for online banking and shopping until about 2014, as all such online activities required sites to use ActiveX -- a plugin created by Microsoft.
It remained the default browser for many Seoul government sites until very recently, local reports said.
The websites of the Korea Water Resources Corporation and the Korea Expressway Corporation only functioned properly in IE until at least June 10, according to a report by the Maeil Economic Daily.
- 'Suffering' for IE -
As a software engineer and web developer, Jung told AFP he constantly suffered at work because of compatibility issues involving the now-defunct browser.
In South Korea, when you are doing web development work, the expectation was always that it should look good in Internet Explorer, rather than Chrome, he said.
Websites that look good in other browsers, such as Safari or Chrome, can look very wrong in IE, which often forced him to spend many extra hours working to ensure compatibility.
Jung said that he was overjoyed by IE's retirement.
But he also said he felt genuinely nostalgic and emotional about the browser's demise, as he remembers its heyday -- one of the reasons he was inspired to erect the grave stone.
He quoted Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki: People are often relieved that machines don't have souls, but we as human beings actually give our hearts to them, Jung told AFP, explaining his feelings for IE.
He said he was pleased by the response to his joke grave and that he and his brother -- who owns the cafe -- plan to leave the monument on the rooftop in Gyeongju indefinitely.
It's been very exciting to make others laugh, he said.