Goodbye Internet Explorer…
Long time ago, I was sitting in from of my home PC and used Dialup connection and there was a “e” and I click on it and visit a website. Those days, I wouldn’t know what is the browser or website but it was my first interaction with the internet. As I grow up and learn more about IT and it becomes part of my life, I had an interesting journey with the Internet Explorer. I remember times when I was a student in the university and we had discussion about browsers like what is the best one. We still having discussions on what is the most suitable technology every day. At some point, Microsoft stops supporting the modern web standards (meaning new websites won’t displayed correctly). However, they didn’t leave the users alone and launched a new browser called Microsoft Edge. It is not only working well with Windows but you could install it on Android, iOS, macOS and Linux too. At this point the Microsoft Edge provides a great user experience and support for modern web standard. Microsoft official announced support for the Internet Explorer will be ending on June 15, 2022. Therefore, in case you are still using the Internet Explorer, you should start moving to the Microsoft Edge. There is a common question like we have websites or applications which are relays on the Internet Explorer. For example, ActiveX, which only supported on the Internet Explorer and I commonly heard this feedback where they are old CCTV applications need ActiveX and Microsoft Edge is not supporting them. The answer is there is feature called Internet Explorer Mode where you would be able to configure the Microsoft Edge to run websites with the Internet Explorer functionalities and inside the Microsoft Edge and you should see an icon like the following.
In case, you are still using the Internet Explorer or you depend on the Internet Explorer, follow these advises.
IT Professionals: As a rapid workaround try the Internet Explorer Mode and configure it and ask users to run the Microsoft Edge while loading websites in the IE Mode and continuously adding websites into this mode. In the long term, consider upgrade or replacing old websites and solutions with the new ones. Take a note the new web standards would have better security, performance and qualities. You would be able to configure the IE Mode using Group Policy.
Developers: using modern standards and new website functionalities is recommend for the user experience as well as quality of your software products. There was a time when we have to use extensions like ActiveX, Java, Flash Payer… because we couldn’t do it inside the website and it was a challenge for the user where they have to install extensions and extra programs. Nowadays new web standards like HTML5, WebGL and etc. giving you the possibility to develop rich web applications without asking users to install extensions and being worry about out-of-date extensions causing security and quality issues.
The following are the resources helping the IT Professionals to configure the IE Mode:
What is Internet Explorer mode? | Microsoft Docs
Configure IE mode Policies | Microsoft Docs
The future of Internet Explorer on Windows 10 is in Microsoft Edge | Windows Experience Blog
Edge Internet Explorer (IE) Compatibility mode – Microsoft