Is It Finally The End For Internet Explorer?

Microsoft's Internet Explorer has been around since the days of Windows 95 operating system. Originally it was released as an additionally feature in Windows, but was later integrated into the Operating System. It was also one of the earliest major browsers to be released along with Netscape Navigator and Opera.

A Little About Web Browsers

Most people know that in order to surf the Internet you have to use a web browser, but why do you have to use a web browser?

Web sites are actually just a lot of code. Structurally they mainly use what is called HTML and they use CSS to make things pretty. Browsers also use a language called Javascript to make the site more interactive for users. This is how things animate on the web page as you hover or click on things. Web browsers all have rendering engines that process all that code and display them in a way we can interact with them.

Some browsers share these rendering engines, but in the early days, most browsers had their own engines. The engines all had their own flavor of how Javascript should work. This has caused many headaches for web developers over the years. Just because a web site works flawlessly in one browser does not mean it will necessarily work in all browsers due to they can render the site differently.

In 2008, Google released Google Chrome. They also released the base code for Chrome in an open source project called Chromium. This allowed any browser developer to look and see how Chromium (and Chrome) renders web pages. It also made it to where other browsers could adopt Chromium for their rendering. Opera browser did this several years later in 2014. In 2020, Edge joined the Chromium family as well while still retaining most backwards compatibility for Internet Explorer 11.

While I am excited about this, there are those who are not happy that Microsoft decided to disband their own engine in favor of Chromium due to it reduces the amount of competition out there. With major players such as Apple's Safari and Mozilla Firefox out there, I don't see it as much of a concern. People still have choices of what they can use and this move also helps create some needed standards.

What's The Problem With Internet Explorer?

I'm glad you asked. Internet Explorer has been pretty controversial since its early days. I'm not just referring to the annoyances of the way its rendering engine works. There were some lawsuites surrounding it, especially when it was first released. That is outside the scope of this article though.

Is It Finally The End For Internet Explorer?

Microsoft's Internet Explorer has been around since the days of Windows 95 operating system. Originally it was released as an additionally feature in Windows, but was later integrated into the Operating System. It was also one of the earliest major browsers to be released along with Netscape Navigator and Opera.

A Little About Web Browsers

Most people know that in order to surf the Internet you have to use a web browser, but why do you have to use a web browser?

Web sites are actually just a lot of code. Structurally they mainly use what is called HTML and they use CSS to make things pretty. Browsers also use a language called Javascript to make the site more interactive for users. This is how things animate on the web page as you hover or click on things. Web browsers all have rendering engines that process all that code and display them in a way we can interact with them.

Some browsers share these rendering engines, but in the early days, most browsers had their own engines. The engines all had their own flavor of how Javascript should work. This has caused many headaches for web developers over the years. Just because a web site works flawlessly in one browser does not mean it will necessarily work in all browsers due to they can render the site differently.

In 2008, Google released Google Chrome. They also released the base code for Chrome in an open source project called Chromium. This allowed any browser developer to look and see how Chromium (and Chrome) renders web pages. It also made it to where other browsers could adopt Chromium for their rendering. Opera browser did this several years later in 2014. In 2020, Edge joined the Chromium family as well while still retaining most backwards compatibility for Internet Explorer 11.

While I am excited about th There are also technical reasons for why it was a problem. In Windows 95, Internet Explorer was an add-on to the operating system. It was something optional that you could install. In Windows 98, it was not only released with the operating system, but also integrated into the operating system. This meant if Internet Explorer crashed while you were browsing the web, you could say goodbye to everything else you were doing.

Another reason this was very bad was it allowed you (and other programs) to access your files on your computer through Internet Explorer. You could open a browser and type the path to a directory, and Internet Explorer would open the directory. This allowed malicious code in websites to directly attack Windows PCs. This was a major driver in people adopting other browsers such as Firefox and Opera due to they weren't integrated into the operating system. Since they weren't integrated, they were susceptible to the same malicious code attacks that Internet Explorer was.

Microsoft tried adding protective measures in place to protect systems as they released new operating systems and new versions of Internet Explorer. Ultimately, they removed the integration and made it a stand alone application again.

Other than the security issues caused by Internet Explorer over the years, it has always had its own flavor of a rendering engine. While it was supposedly compatible with the way other rendering engines worked, it still required extra coding to make sites work specifically on Internet Explorer or on other browsers.

This issue spurned a host of Javascript Frameworks such as Angular and React to give developers a single framework to build sites across multiple browsers without having to worry about implementation quirks of the browsers.

Why Is Edge Using Chromium A Good Thing?

Chromium is an open-sourced browser that anyone can contribute code to. Code contributions are moderated and reviewed for any security issues. Microsoft itself is now contributing code to Chromium. They have added compatibility with Microsoft products, submitted security fixes, and bug fixes. Any browser using Chromium, such as Chrome and Opera, will benefit from these contributions.

Now that Edge is based on Chromium, it is a lot more compatible with sites built for Chrome and Opera. Chrome and Opera now also get the enhancements made to the Chromium code base by Microsoft. This should lead to a lot less compatibility issues going forward.

There are still other browsers out their using their own engines such as Firefox and Safari. So compatibility will likely never be perfect, but it is one less engine that we have to code for as web developers.

In my opinion, it also drives innovation when large companies can work together while still having healthy competition from the likes of Firefox and Safari. Firefox has a very devout following, so I am not worried about it going away anytime soon. As for Safari, it has the loyalty of those who use Apple products.

What Is Happening To Internet Explorer?

Microsoft announced that it wil be retiring Internet Explorer 11 on June 15, 2022. Internet Explorer 11 is the latest version of Internet Explorer.

For home users, this really won't matter much other than you will be redirected to Edge browser if you try to use Internet Explorer. At this point, you should just stop using Internet Explorer and use edge or an alternative such as Mozilla Firefox or Opera.

For enterprise users, Microsoft has sent instructions to companies on how to prepare their systems for this date. If you are an admin, you can find this information in the Microsoft 365 admin center under article MC343058.

Final Thoughts

While this marks an end of an era, I am personally happy to see Internet Explorer go. I also am happy with Microsoft's replacement on the most part. Edge is not a perfect browser, but it has some great features that makes me daily drive it as one of the main browsers I use. I'll dig more into Edge features in a different blog post sometime.

To Internet Explorer, as a friend of mine put it so politically once upon a time, "It's been real. Peace."

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