The End of IE

Designers dislike Microsoft Internet Explorer because it’s hard to make things that are great in modern browsers look good in IE at the same time. Other people dislike it because of its security issues, because it doesn’t support all the cool features other web browsers do, and because so often things that work well and look good in other browsers don’t work well or look good in IE.

But IE has been around for a decade now, and many early reviewers liked IE11 much more than previous versions. In the early years of the century, IE had up to 95% market share. Even now, many corporations insist that their workers use IE, and sometimes old versions of it, because that’s what the company’s proprietary software was built for.

Sometimes it’s used company-wide because of a company-wide rule against downloading anything. This can keep an entire company stuck in IE6. This kind of thing led to an internet hoax in 2011 claiming that users of IE have lower levels of intelligence than users of modern browsers, as evidenced by their refusal to update their browsers.

Now IE is being replaced by Microsoft Edge. Originally developed under the codename “Project Spartan,” Edge is a lightweight browser being delivered with Windows 10.

Microsoft wanted to keep the IE initials, and especially the “E” so that people accustomed to clicking on that blue E would be able to figure out how to start it. This may imply that the internet hoax was right, but it’s good practice to avoid unnecessary changes in processes.

Early tests say that the new IE is still slower than Chrome and Firefox, but that it has features comparable to Chrome and Firefox.

The Edge website doesn’t have a lot to say. Here’s a sample of the homepage description of the new browser: