>> Hi. I'm Fred Pullen,
Principal Program Manager on the Microsoft Edge Team.
We're excited to announce
the next chapter in Enterprise Web Browsing.
Internet Explorer Mode or IE Mode for
short provides compatibility for legacy websites.
So that Microsoft Edge with IE Mode now has
compatibility for modern websites with using the Chromium Engine,
and compatibility for legacy Web apps using IE Mode.
To explain the importance of this,
let's talk a little bit about the history of Internet Explorer.
Internet Explorer shipped about 25 years ago,
which makes you really feel old if you
remember Netscape Navigator or Gopher before that.
When Internet Explorer first shipped,
we really didn't have Web standards that
provided the power of the PC like we do today.
We didn't have HTML5.
We didn't have CSS3.
We didn't have WebGL, and so as a result,
Microsoft provided compatibility through
binary extensions for Java runtime engines,
Silverlight, Flash and other binary extensions that
really lit up your Web applications with the power of your PC.
Over the years though,
we had to provide
backward compatibility for older versions of Internet Explorer,
and this problem has continued to this day.
So let's look at some of the older
document modes and how this evolves.
When we first shipped IE5 and IE6,
there weren't really a lot of Web standards.
So we had some proprietary standards
in those versions of the browser.
When we shipped Internet Explorer 7,
we knew that there were a lot of sites designed for IE5 and IE6.
So we carried forward something called
IE5 Doc Mode or Quirks Mode.
Likewise, when we shipped IE8,
we carried forward IE7 Doc Mode,
and IE5 Doc Mode to provide
backward compatibility for those older sites.
By the way, if you've ever heard of Compatibility View,
Compatibility View is basically just a switch that
says if there's a valid DOCTYPE tag,
give me IE7 Doc Mode.
If there's not a valid DOCTYPE tag,
I need IE5 Doc Mode.
Well, the fact is many customers,
especially large enterprise customers have continued to use
Compatibility View inside their Intranets for years.
So many applications out there have been designed for
IE5 Doc Mode or IE7 Doc Mode or even IE8 Doc Mode,
but haven't been designed for modern Web or modern Web browsers.
Now, when IE9, we carried forward
all of these Doc Modes IE8, 7, or 5.
In IE10, we carried forward IE9, 8, 7,
and 5, and then IE11,
we carried forward all of these Doc Modes including IE10.
So in IE11, when it first shipped,
we included Document Modes for IE11,
10, 9, 8, 7, 5.
This gave a lot of power and a lot of backward compatibility.
But with power comes some risks.
Having all of those document modes
essentially means you have a much bigger attack surface
than you would if you were running a modern browser
without older document modes or without backward compatibility.
Now, customers came to us
about five years ago and said that
these document modes weren't enough,
that these actually wouldn't work for
some websites that were designed
for older versions of the browser.
So we introduced in 2014, IE8 Enterprise Mode,
which provided higher fidelity emulation
for older versions of IE8,
and we also introduced IE7 Enterprise Mode,
which is a higher fidelity emulation for
IE8 running in Compatibility View.
So you either got IE7 Doc Mode or IE5 Doc Mode.
The fact is we know that customers are using these Doc Modes.
We've done independent surveys.
We have talked to customers when I did a session at Ignite,
I had maybe 200 people in the room, and I said,
"How many of you still need Internet
Explorer," and it was a sea of hands went up.
So I said, "All right, let's switch it up.
How many of you no longer need Internet Explorer for
anything," and I had four hands out of 200 people.
So clearly, there's still a need for Internet Explorer even though
our guidance for years has been as you
upgrade your Web applications to modern standards,
you can leave yourself of
the of the dependency on Internet Explorer.
When we introduced Windows 10,
our suggestion to customers was to standardize on
Microsoft Edge using EdgeHTML as your modern browser,
and fall back to IE11 as needed just for backward compatibility.
But this is a jarring experience.
There are a couple of problems with this.
One is it's two different browsers.
So end-users we're confused when
you're surfing the web using one browser and then suddenly
another one pops up even if you're using
the Enterprise Mode site lists to
automatically pop up the appropriate browser
at the appropriate time,
it's still two different browsers and
it's a confusing user experience.
The second problem with this is Microsoft Edge on
EdgeHTML was limited to Windows 10 Semi-Annual Channel.
So we only had Windows Microsoft Edge available on Windows 10,
not Windows 10 LCSC or LTSB, not Windows Server,
not older versions of Windows like Windows 7,
or Windows 8.1, only Windows 10,
and it was tied to the operating system.
So over the browser updates were tied to OS updates.
The good news is with the advent
of Microsoft Edge on the Chromium Engine.
Some of these limitations go away.
We now have a Web browser that will work
on every supported version of Windows.
We will support Windows Server.
We will support Windows 10 LTSB and LTSC branches.
We will support Windows 7 and Windows 8.1.
So this is really the Windows Web browsing story
is that you can standardize on
Microsoft Edge as your default web browser
and fall back to IE11 for backward compatibility.
But we've done one other thing,
and that's what we just announced at Microsoft Build.
By introducing Internet Explorer mode,
we're effectively blurring the lines between the browsers.
So from an end-user standpoint,
it seems like a single browser.
I'm able to just surf the Web using Microsoft Edge.
If I encounter a site that requires
backward compatibility in IE11,
and it's on your enterprise mode site list, or on your Intranet,
it will automatically render that site
inside the Microsoft Edge frame.
So let's talk about this in more detail.
Today, you're able to run Microsoft Edge and fall back to IE11,
but it's a browsing experience across two different browsers.
We also, as I mentioned before,
only support Windows 10 Semi-Annual Channel.
Coming soon, we'll have versions of
Microsoft Edge for Windows 10 LTSC,
Windows 8.1, Windows 7, Windows Server.
We also with the release of Internet Explorer Mode,
we'll have a single Microsoft Edge browser
that supports the best of both worlds;
the best of modern Web applications and
legacy Web applications using older Internet Explorer standards.
Let's take a quick look at what this looks like.
I'm switching to a machine using Microsoft Edge on EdgeHTML,
and if I tried to go to a website that requires
ActiveX controls or requires older technology,
I may get a warning that I need
to install the Microsoft Silverlight plug-in.
It actually won't work because I'm running Microsoft Edge.
The best I can do here is to "Add"
this site to MI Enterprise mode site list and
automatically instantiate Internet Explorer
when we encounter the site.
Now, in the new Microsoft Edge.
If I go to this site,
notice that it renders just fine,
because I'm in Internet Explorer Mode.
We will have an icon to indicate that it's Internet Explorer Mode.
So this is primarily for your help desk to
understand which mode the user is in.
But from an end-user standpoint,
this is just Microsoft Edge.
There's nothing I need to know,
nothing I need to do.
As an end user, I just surfed the web.
If I encounter a site that's on my Enterprise Mode Site List,
and listed of as approved for Internet Explorer,
or a site that's on my intranet,
and I'll explain that policy in a moment,
then it will automatically instantiate
inside Microsoft Edge using the appropriate mode.
This includes support for all document modes,
including Enterprise Mode, and it
also includes support for ActiveX controls.
Now let's talk about management.
Today Enterprise Mode has these policies available for management.
So I can start in Microsoft Edge,
and I can use the Enterprise Mode Site List.
I can also send all Intranet sites over 208 Explorer 11.
Many customers start out by
sending everything on their intranet to IE11,
because you know that you've tested
everything for IE11 and it works properly.
As time goes by, you're able to create a list of
exceptions in the Enterprise Mode Site List.
Sites that have been modernized and can open in Microsoft Edge.
Eventually, that will flip,
where you can turn off the policies
sending all Intranet sites to IE11,
and only send the sites that require Internet Explorer 11.
In other words, as the balance shifts,
and you've modernized your web applications,
eventually you can use
the Enterprise Mode Site List to
just send the exceptions over to IE11.
So that's what we have today,
is that to browser balance,
and we have policies and Microsoft Edge and IE11,
to be able to support,
how and when and where users can
instantiate Internet Explorer and and go back to Microsoft Edge.
What we're adding in
Internet Explorer Mode is just a couple of policies.
We have one policy in Microsoft Edge that
decides what the defaults IE integration level is.
So you can decide to keep the two browser experience,
you can decide to run
IE11 as an application just as you can today with Microsoft Edge,
or with by flipping a switch,
you can use IE mode,
and IE mode will honor the other policies that you have in place.
IE mode will honor your Enterprise Mode Site List,
and IE mode will honor the send all Intranet sites to IE11 policy.
It's really how do you want IE11
integrated into your Microsoft Edge experience.
By the way, if you have a technical reason or
a business reason why a site would
need to run in the full version of Internet Explorer,
we can create exceptions.
So we are extending the Enterprise Mode Site List schema,
to include a tag that says,
"really open the site in the full version of Internet Explorer."
I say technical or business reasons because
we want your feedback on how well this works for everything.
It should work perfectly for ActiveX controls, for document modes,
but obviously there's a very long tail
of line-of-business applications out there.
When we were testing an Enterprise Mode for example,
we found one customer who had card coded in
ActiveX control to look for the Operating System,
and it wouldn't run if it was running on anything but Windows XP.
So I realized there's a very long tail
of line-of-business applications out there.
If for some reason you do encounter a site that
either doesn't work in Internet Explorer Mode,
or for business reasons,
maybe the ISV doesn't support that version,
and they want to be able to run
the full version of Internet Explorer,
you absolutely can create
that exception in the Enterprise Mode Site Lists,
so that the default behavior could be IE mode,
but it can fall out to the full IE11 app
for a particular application that you've specified.
On the IE11 side,
we want to minimize the changes,
because of course we don't want to break
anything with Internet Explorer.
But we do have to add a policy deciding
which version of Microsoft Edge you would
prefer Internet Explorer to bounce back to.
In other words, if I've chosen to launch Internet Explorer 11,
and I've using that switch to IE11 app mode,
I need to know which version of Microsoft Edge to switch back to.
It could be that in your environment,
you're happy with Microsoft Edge on Edge HTML,
and you want to be able to fully test
Microsoft Edge on Chromium before deploying, that's fine.
We will absolutely support that and support you in that.
But you need to decide,
is it okay if we choose
the Beta version of Microsoft Edge on Chromium,
or do I fall back to Microsoft Edge
using Edge HTML if the Beta version is not available?
So you'll have some flexibility there on how,
and when and where your users get into Microsoft Edge,
and obviously you can limit at this point
the sites they're instantiate in Internet Explorer as well.
I also want to reassure you that
Internet Explorer is not going away.
Internet Explorer is considered a
component of the Operating System,
and follows the life-cycle of
the Operating System on which it's installed.
So in Windows Server 2019 for example,
internet Explorer 11 is supported until 2029.
That said, we want to make sure that we start to
restrict when and where and how
Internet Explorer 11 is instantiated.
As I showed before, Internet Explorer 11 has a lot of
power under the hood with those multiple document modes,
but with additional functionality comes additional risk.
So we want to give you the tools that you need to be able to limit
how and when and where your users get to Internet Explorer,
and Internet Explorer Mode is an important step in that journey.
You can use Internet Explorer Mode to
limit the sites that instantiate Internet Explorer,
just to those sites that you've approved so
that the user doesn't have to leave Microsoft Edge.
They don't have to leave a modern browser.
Obviously as you upgrade
your web applications to modern standards,
you can continue to limit more and more and
more where Internet Explorer is running.
So what's next? We suggest that you keep
using Microsoft Edge and Internet Explorer
11 because the Enterprise Mode Site List will
be honored by the next generation of Microsoft Edge on Chromium.
The Internet Explorer Mode feature uses
the Enterprise Mode Site List to be able to
determine which sites to instantiate in IE mode.
You can also join the Microsoft Edge community
at microsoftedgeinsider.com,
and please keep sending us your feedback.
Finally, stay tuned, look for more features and functionality.
Soon we will have more to share in the coming weeks and months.
Thank you and have a great Microsoft Build 2019.