Microsoft is very keen for Internet Explorer to die as a web browser, and next month IE users are in for a bit of a shock. Some websites they attempt to visit using IE will trigger the Edge browser to load instead.
Remember, Edge can’t be uninstalled on Windows 10, so it’s always available to use if necessary. Microsoft believes it is now necessary for a growing number of websites that have incompatibilities with IE. As ZDNet reports, from next month, Microsoft will release a list of websites incompatible with IE and use it to bypass the IE load request and launch the Edge browser as an alternative.
So far, the list contains 1,156 incompatible sites and includes some of the most popular destinations on the internet, such as Instagram, StackOverflow, Twitter, YouTube, and Yahoo Mail. Attempting to visit any site on the list will not only load the website in Edge, but a second tab will be loaded (in Edge as well) explaining what happened. The explanation page says in very large text at the top “The website you were trying to reach doesn’t work with Internet Explorer.” You can’t get much clearer than that.
The decision to do this is sure to anger some of the people still using IE, and if anyone has decided to block Edge loading it seems likely these websites simply won’t load anymore. Enterprise users are getting some reprieve from Microsoft, with group policies allowed to be set to disable the behavior for now. But if the websites aren’t compatible with IE anymore, that’s sure to cause some support headaches going forward.
