Web developers around the world are rejoicing because the web browser Internet Explorer,
is finally dead officially. For the most part.
Now, what happened is Internet Explorer 11 - IE 11, which was released in like 2013 initially,
has officially ended support as of today June 15th, 2022. Now what that means is
it will no longer be getting security updates even though it was released way back in 2013.
It's still continued to get Windows security updates regularly. And that's because there is
a small fraction of people still using Internet Explorer and I'll explain why in a little bit.
But here's the big thing even though the Internet Explorer 11 app, the
desktop application is officially dead, not supported anymore,
the skeleton of Internet Explorer is not going to completely disappear,
not for a long time. And that is because Microsoft actually basically replaced it with
a Internet Explorer Mode in Microsoft Edge, the browser. So that's basically
what they're telling people to use. So if you do use things that require Internet Explorer,
they say just use the Internet Explorer Mode and it should work just fine.
So there's not really any reason anymore to use the ancient actual application. And
Microsoft has said that they will support this Internet Explorer Mode in Edge until at least
2029 or 2030, because they're going to give at least a one-year heads up when they do decide
to stop support for it. And I think they might even extend it beyond that time if they want to.
Now, if you're curious about this Internet Explorer Mode,
I don't believe it's enabled by default in Edge. You have to go and change a setting to enable it,
it's really easy. So how do you do that, if you want to,
there's not really a reason to unless you have a specific reason. But if you're curious about it,
what you do is go to settings and then on the left go to the section that says Default Browser.
And then you'll see a section that says Internet Explorer Compatibility. Now the first one doesn't
matter because that's about launching Microsoft Edge from Internet Explorer, which is not going
to be a thing anymore, whereas the bottom two are what's relevant here. So there's a setting
"allow sites to be reloaded in Internet Explorer Mode", and the default I believe,
is just don't allow, but the other settings are Allow or Don't Allow explicitly.
You also see there is an option to add sites that will just be automatically loaded
in Internet Explorer Mode if you use a site like that that, we don't have to keep
doing it. Now, even if you do change it to Allow Internet Explorer Mode,
it won't allow you to do it all the time. I guess somehow they have something in there that checks
whether or not Internet Explorer Mode should be applied at all.
So most modern websites, it will not allow it. It'll just be grayed-out. Though I did find a
test website by Microsoft, I guess it's kind of old, and it does allow you to reload in Internet
Explorer Mode. It does also work without Internet Explorer Mode, but it also allows you to load
into that. So if you do reload and activate the Internet Explorer Mode for that page,
you'll now have a new icon at the left of the URL bar that shows that Internet Explorer icon.
And then it might actually pop this up initially, but you can also click it to reveal it,
where it shows some info and says this page is open in Internet Explorer Mode. It says "most
pages work better in Microsoft Edge for security reasons. We recommend you leave this mode as
soon as you're done browsing this page". So they don't want you opening the page in Internet
Explorer Mode and then clicking links to some modern website that doesn't need it anymore,
I guess. Then you also have some other options, like "open this page in compatibility
view". I don't know how that's different from the regular Internet Explorer Mode. But
I guess it's just there if something looks wrong. And then also "open this page
in Internet Explorer Mode next time". It also shows some information below,
not really sure what it all is. Saying compatibility mode IE 11,
protected mode on zone internet. So I'm assuming the bottom one is
whether you're connected to a local website, on your own network, or something on the Internet,
it'll tell you that. And when you are in the Internet Explorer Mode now, instead in the
settings, there is an option to Exit Internet Explorer Mode so you can click that to stop it.
Now, you might be wondering wait a minute, why is Internet Explorer even still being
used by people? Why are they supporting it for so long? And I believe it's not for consumers,
it's mostly for companies that are probably using internal web apps that are absolutely
ancient. And for one reason or another, they either can't
update it to a new app or it would be financially infeasible, or just very difficult to do so.
And because these apps were created a long time ago with Internet Explorer in mind,
then they require features that only Internet Explorer apparently supports. And this could also
be the case for perhaps specialized hardware. And one example I saw is that maybe a lot of
health care equipment, in other industries and like manufacturing, specialized stuff
is going to be using maybe a web interface for that device that requires Internet Explorer
and either it has never been updated by the company, or it's not designed to be updated,
and you just need to access it with Internet Explorer,
it's as simple as that. So I saw one example might be like MRI machines or CAT scan machines,
and perhaps they have some kind of Web interface to control it or maybe configure it. You need to
use Internet Explorer or else it just won't work. When Microsoft announced that they were going to
be retiring the Internet Explorer app, which was actually a year ago, they gave a heads up.
They said that when they went and surveyed a lot of companies and they tested a whole
bunch of internal apps to see just how many of these apps actually require Internet Explorer,
they found that just 0.3% of apps used by corporations require Internet Explorer.
And I guess that is enough where they said, Yeah, we should probably keep supporting it,
at least in some capacity, which is why it's that Internet Explorer Mode.
And you might also be thinking, all right, well, these companies they're just being lazy. They
don't want to spend the money to upgrade and get a new app. But I mean, if you think about
it from like a logical standpoint, you can kind of justified in your mind, like imagine they created
this bespoke app customer made from scratch like 20 years ago to be used in this company for a
specific purpose, and maybe it's integrated into all the rest of their systems and OK,
they can just keep using Internet Explorer or they could hire a bunch of developers, pay potentially
hundreds of thousands of dollars to create another completely bespoke app from scratch.
Then they have to make sure it gets tested and for stability and it's working,
all of that just to do the exact same thing the current one does it's like, Hmm, why should we
bother if they're going to keep supporting it? So I think for a lot of these companies,
they're probably just going to keep using the old apps as long as it is supported.
But it's kind of like a game of chicken. Who's going to switch first? Is Microsoft going to say,
you're cut off and piss off a bunch of companies,
or are the companies going to actually be willing to shell out the money to do so?
I think eventually they probably will, but it's going to be very, very slow.
So not much more to say about it. It's the end of an era, I guess you might
say. So let me know down in the comments. Maybe your company still uses something
related to Internet Explorer and that'd be kind of funny to hear
about. If you guys want to keep watching, the next video I'd recommend is where I
talked about a set of some of the most useful Windows programs ever,
made by one guy. I'll put that link right there. If you enjoyed this video,
maybe consider checking out some of the other recent content I made,
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videos about twice a week, so thanks so much for watching guys and I'll see you in the next one.