Chris Jackson’s title at Microsoft is Principal Program Manager in the Experiences and Devices Group specializing in cybersecurity, application compatibility, and modernizing software assets. In more everyday terms, he’s a browser security expert with the company. He made a pretty bold statement recently in a blog post. He said that people need to stop thinking about Internet Explorer as a browser and look at it more as a compatibility solution. Meaning that you should only use IE if the website you’re visiting or program you’re using won’t work with anything else.
He warned strongly against setting it as a default browser. While he said that he understood that IE’s ease of use made it very attractive, especially to business users, it was time to let it go unless it was absolutely necessary.
He wrote: “You see, Internet Explorer is a compatibility solution. We’re not supporting new web standards for it and, while many sites work fine, developers by and large just aren’t testing for Internet Explorer these days. They’re testing on modern browsers. So, if we continued our previous approach, you would end up in a scenario where, by optimizing for the things you have, you end up not being able to use new apps as they come out. As new apps are coming out with greater frequency, what we want to help you do is avoid having to miss out on a progressively larger portion of the web!”
While Internet Explorer 11 is still included with Windows 10 and still works, While there is still security support, the company is no longer making any efforts to update it to work with the ever-changing digital landscape. As a consequence, IE now only accounts for just over 10% of desktop and laptop traffic to the Internet. It barely edges out Firefox in popularity. Still, it’s got twice as many users as the Windows 10 default browser Microsoft Edge. Chrome is the most popular browser, accounting for about 65% of web traffic from desktops and laptops and also about 65% of mobile traffic.
I am not still using IE. I never used IE. I don’t like it, and never did. I have IE 11, because it has come built in to Edge, but I don’t think I have ever run it. I have Edge, but very rarely use it. I do not have Chrome, or a Google account, because I don’t like Google’s tracking and integrated spying. I use Google search, but I block all 3rd party cookies and delete the rest on a regular basis. My “go-to” browsers are Firefox and Opera, and I do not have accounts with them, either. There’s no longer any such thing as being both “data-marketing-proof” and living in the present, but you can do a few things to try reduce your exposure
Yes, I still use IE and No I would not give it up for any reason they can dream up. Trish
I still have IE on my HP Pavilion HPE Series that was Windows 7 before accepting the free download of Windows 10. I haven’t use IE in a while, and only then to open some old personal photos. After reading your article, I’m not sure if need to keep it on my computer. I’m not a computer genius, and don’t know if there is anything on IE that is needed. I use Microsoft Edge with Windows 10. Certainly don’t want to do anything to create a problem that can’t be recovered! Thanks for your response, Bobbie