After nearly 27 years, Internet Explorer (abbr. IE) was finally laid to rest by Microsoft. The ageing technology, coupled with lower usage, left Microsoft no other choice than to officially discontinue the web browser.
What happened when Internet Explorer was officially retired
On June the 15th 2022, Microsoft discontinued all support for IE.
You will still see the IE icon on your taskbar and/or desktop, but if you go to click it, a message box will popup notifying you that IE has been retired and that you are being redirected to Microsoft Edge in IE Mode.
Eventually, Microsoft are reportedly planning, in a future update, to permanently disable IE entirely, thus removing the icon from your machine.
What is Microsoft Edge and IE Mode?
Microsoft Edge (abbr. Edge) is Microsoft’s new web browser, released on March the 30th, 2015, not long before the release of Windows 10.
Microsoft realised that the Internet was advancing at a rate that was too high for IE to catch on to:
But the web has evolved and so have browsers. Incremental improvements to Internet Explorer couldn’t match the general improvements to the web at large, so we started fresh.
–
Windows Experience Blog
So they started fresh and released Edge to the public, a faster, more secure and more streamlined successor to IE.
Not every website is ready to make the switch, in fact, some websites are built on older technologies and can only function through IE. This is where IE Mode comes in.
IE Mode is a feature that comes pre-packaged with Edge that allows users to run legacy IE-based websites and applications.
Microsoft are reportedly supporting this feature through until 2029, so businesses still have ample time to make the transition over to Edge.
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