Microsoft is telling people not to use Internet Explorer (IE).
Why shouldn’t you use IE?
Well, Microsoft hasn’t really done anything to IE since Windows 10 came out with the new browser, Edge, in 2016. We’ll get to Edge in a minute.
So, IE has less than 6% of the desktop browser share and is largely there for sites that won’t run in anything but IE. There are still a few.
Microsoft would rather ditch IE and use the developer time spent in maintenance for something more productive.
What about Edge?
Again, Edge is about the only browser with less traction than IE – well under 5%.
People don’t use it because sites don’t look quite right compared to the way that say, Chrome shows them.
The solution that Microsoft has come up with is that Edge will be using Google’s open-source Chromium browser engine rather than its current internal one. This hasn’t been universally welcomed, as not everyone’s a complete fan of Google.
What’s wrong with Google Chrome?
Google are revising some of the internals in Chrome, and those revisions will make it harder to block ads.
Now, obviously, Google makes their money from adverts and provides Chrome purely in a spirit of goodwill because companies like Microsoft use their dominance of the browser market to abuse their position and foist unwanted content on you. So making adverts harder to block isn’t something Google would deliberately do. Oh. Maybe… maybe not.
OK, so that’s the current and near-future browser situation.
It’s coming up on 30 years since the start of the process that led to the World Wide Web. Next month is the 30th anniversary of the original “Information Management” proposal to CERN from Tim Berners-Lee.
Click on the image to see a simulation of the original web browser.
Sources and more information about browsers.
The Register – More about Internet Explorer
The Register – More about Edge and Google Chrome
The Register – More about the recreation of the world’s first browser
