The Beginning of the End of Internet Explorer 11

Microsoft Edge
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You may remember our previous post about how Microsoft is ending Internet Explorer in 2021.  As web developers we see this as good news!

The phasing out has officially begun.  Starting in recent versions of Microsoft Edge, when Internet Explorer visits an incompatible site, the browsing session will automatically be launched in Microsoft Edge to continue the browsing session.

What does that mean?  Well, if a visitor to a site is still using Internet Explorer 11, Microsoft keeps a list of incompatible sites and will automatically force the visitor to open the site in Microsoft Edge.

This special list is maintained by Microsoft, and is starting with big sites.  Notably on the list are YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, Yahoo Mail, StackOverflow, StackExchange, VK, ESPN, Chase, Hotstar, Moneygram, eharmony, and GoDaddy, just to name a few.  These sites all dropped Internet Explorer support already.

It’s going to take a while for this process to trickle down, but we’re already seeing less IE11 traffic and more Edge traffic on our client sites.

Here’s more information from ZDNet and Bleeping Computer.