Bye Internet Explorer

It is easier said than done: “just stop supporting Internet Explorer (IE)”. There are large organizations that require IE for some of their legacy often in-house applications. If you serve these organizations, you might be required to support IE. Even though, globally, roughly only 2% of the users still use this old browser.

For versions before IE the argument has been easy: “We don’t support a browser Microsoft is not supporting,” but support for IE11 doesn’t seem to stop anytime soon (see the update below!): The latest IE (IE11)will be supported as long as the last version of Windows that supports it. That means untill support for the current version of Windows has ended.

With the launch of Edge, Microsoft initially went along with popular demand not to bring support for older engines to their new browser Spartan, which would be released as Edge. The very latest version of Edge, however, now featuring a Chromium based rendering engine as their default, will also support legacy IE style rendering within Edge. They call this mode “IE mode” and can be turned on per site.

Until recently the Chromium based Edge wasn’t pushed to the masses. But that changed this week (early June 2020) as Microsoft announced that they soon will push this browser to replace the old Edge browser via Windows update.

Microsoft is committed to supporting legacy software, but with IE it has also become a burden on the development of the web. With the new Edge with IE mode, we can at least tell our clients that we really don’t have to support IE, as they can simply switch to the new Edge, which will work for both their new and their legacy web-based tooling, in the very same browser. At this moment I’m confident that it will enable developers to finally say goodbye to supporting IE. Fewer workarounds. No longer holding back on using last year’s new tech. Thank you Microsoft.

Update may 2021: Microsoft has announced that Edge will replace Windows 10 as the default browser, June 15, 2022 support for IE 11 will stop. August 17, 2021 Microsoft already stopped supporting IE 11 for its own products. In case someone still runs legacy software in their browsers: they can use the IE mode rendering which will still use the old Trident rendering engine and which will apparently be supported through at least 2029. Good luck maintaining that Microsoft.