VBScript is gone. Once a scripting language to compete with JavaScript in web browsers, VBScript is now disabled by default on all supported versions of Windows after a recent Windows update. But VBScript has been fading away for years.
Goodbye, VBScript!
On August 13, 2019, Microsoft disabled VBScript by default on Windows 7, 8, and 8.1 systems via a Patch Tuesday update. Microsoft released a similar update for Windows 10 on July 9, 2019. Now, on any supported Windows system with the latest updates installed, VBScript will be disabled by default.
VBScript was already mostly gone. Microsoft never supported VBScript in Microsoft Edge, which meant it was limited to Internet Explorer 11. Other browsers like Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, and Apple Safari never implemented VBScript, either.
VBScript Competed With JavaScript
VBScript was a scripting language modeled after Microsoft’s Visual Basic. Its full name is “Microsoft Visual Basic Scripting Edition.”
This language first appeared in a consumer product back in 1996, when it was added to Internet Explorer. Websites could use VBScript just like they could use JavaScript, and Internet Explorer supported both. However, VBScript only worked in Internet Explorer while JavaScript was a cross-browser solution that also worked in other browsers. That’s a big reason why JavaScript won, and most web pages never adopted VBScript for client-side scripts.
Microsoft just disabled VBScript in the browser. By default, Internet Explorer 11 will no longer run VBScript found on web pages. It was rarely used, but there may still be some old internal business websites that rely on VBScript instead of JavaScript.
Microsoft’s Edge browser team wrote about “saying goodbye” to VBScript and other old technologies like ActiveX back in 2015, pointing out that “JavaScript has become the de-facto language of the web.” Edge has never supported VBScript.
VBScript Wasn’t Just For Web Browsers
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