Internet Explorer the End of an Era
Windows 11 does not include Internet Explorer, and the only way to access this browser is through the “IE mode” option in Microsoft Edge, which allows you to load websites as in Internet Explorer.
On June 15, 2022, Microsoft removed Internet Explorer from Windows 10, and this update will be available to all users using version 20H2 or newer. Internet Explorer will remain available on Server and Enterprize versions of Windows 10, and Windows 8, and all previous versions, will still have this browser. This is to be expected because Microsoft announced it back in 2020.
What Exactly Is Changing?
Microsoft says that Internet Explorer will, little by little, be “redirected” to Microsoft Edge. This means that Internet Explorer will still be present in the Start menu, taskbar, and other locations on your computer, but when you try to start it, Microsoft Edge will open. Files run by Internet Explorer, such as web shortcuts and HTML files, will also run in Microsoft Edge.
The plan is to completely remove Internet Explorer from Windows 10 in the future, and when that happens, the only way to access it will be, as in Windows 11, using the “IE mode” option in Microsoft Edge.
It is important to note that the Internet Explorer Engine, which is located in Windows (MSHTML), will still be present, only the Internet browser will be removed. MSHTML Engine is a program that allows developers to easily add browser functionality to their programs and is used by many Windows programs. Microsoft Edge uses MSHTML for “IE mode” and thus allows websites to be loaded in Internet Explorer.
What Does This Mean for Users?
Retirement of Internet Explorer, for most users, will not be so important. In the last twenty years, the popularity of this internet browser has been constantly decreasing, and today only 0.61% of users use it. This is a huge drop, especially if we take into account that this number was 39.47% in 2011 and 94.04% in 2004.
This Microsoft announcement is more of a historical significance because this represents the end of an era in the development of computer programs, but an era that most will not miss. What we can learn is, that no matter how good the program is, greed and the author’s bad business decisions can ruin it, which eventually happened with Internet Explorer. It has ended its life as an internet browser in which most modern websites do not work properly.
