Microsoft is Building Internet Explorer Into its New Chromium Edge, Adding New Features (theverge.com) 45
Microsoft is unveiling a number of new features for its upcoming Edge Chromium browser today. From a report: The first big addition is a new "IE Mode" for Edge that will allow businesses to load old sites directly in the new Edge Chromium browser, using the Internet Explorer rendering engine. Microsoft is building IE directly into Edge for this purpose, so businesses aren't forced to directly use IE for ancient internal sites. "What we're going to do is make this totally seamless," explains Microsoft's Joe Belfiore, in an interview with The Verge. Currently, the existing version of Edge will open Internet Explorer 11 on Windows 10, which has a separate interface, favorites, and doesn't work well on modern websites. This new IE mode literally loads the content within Edge, so you'd never be able to tell the difference, apart from a small IE logo on the tab that indicates that this mode has been enabled.
This new IE mode is designed exclusively for businesses, and Belfiore admits it's a big pitch to get them to use Edge Chromium instead of a combination of Chrome and Internet Explorer. "We've got a browser for you that updates regularly that will go on Windows 7 and the Mac that handles things like IT customization of the New Tab page and Microsoft Search, and IE built-in," says Belfiore. Microsoft is also allowing businesses to customize the New Tab page for Edge Chromium. This will involve a custom company logo, the option to load some sites into the top tabs, and integration with Microsoft Search and Office 365.
This new IE mode is designed exclusively for businesses, and Belfiore admits it's a big pitch to get them to use Edge Chromium instead of a combination of Chrome and Internet Explorer. "We've got a browser for you that updates regularly that will go on Windows 7 and the Mac that handles things like IT customization of the New Tab page and Microsoft Search, and IE built-in," says Belfiore. Microsoft is also allowing businesses to customize the New Tab page for Edge Chromium. This will involve a custom company logo, the option to load some sites into the top tabs, and integration with Microsoft Search and Office 365.
Java & Silverlight???? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
I gotta ask this. Is it planning java and silverlight support?
And Flash and RealAudio please. Throw in an AltaVista plugin.
Google on Microsoft in IE mode... (Score:3)
I hear all PCs in hell run some facebook/twitter/windows/apple OS. I wonder if this browser is an early version of hell-on-earth.
Re: (Score:1)
I wish. It's more like "This stupid legacy app our entire business has depended on since 2002 and whose vendor went out of business in 2010, only works with IE6, and every replacement vendor's time and cost estimate gives the CEO another mild stroke."
They should embed Lynx inside too (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
I want Gopher Mode!
Yay, extra shitware! Where do I sign? (Score:4, Funny)
Oh wait, I'm running Linux so I guess I won't have this option available to me.
Can I at least get a DLC pack of the latest viruses?
Re: (Score:2)
... you're also a gay vegan crossfit fanatic?
Yeah, you got a problem with that, you incel beardo fat boy?
But should we have seams. (Score:2)
I know it is Microsoft best interest to keep as much backwards compatibility as possible. But we really should be going to our vendors and tell them to fix their products for the 21st century, For my products, every couple of years, I go in and update the product to get rid of old compatibility and upgrade features to run on the most popular current browser that is considered supported. I just recently dumped IE 10 support, and made sure it works optimally with Chrome. This only took me a few days of
Re:But should we have seams. (Score:5, Insightful)
My organization has a contract with a company that uses a Siebel-based system. While the system kinda-sorta works with other browsers, sadly, the only guarantee of full functionality is with IE 11. While I pray every morning to every god I know of that either Siebel will be dropped or they'll find a way to do away with IE-specific code, we're pretty much held hostage. If this Chromium-based Edge browser actually flows through IE functionality to a modern browsers, that's probably a best-case scenario in the short term. It sucks, believe me (seeing as Siebel sucks in so many other ways), but that's where we're at.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
It is not an easy business decision to spend money like that on infrastructure. It's a technical debt that carries a lot of interest, and some companies just won't or can't pay it.
Seamless (Score:2, Interesting)
"What we're going to do is make this totally seamless," explains Microsoft's Joe Belfiore
Joe must be new. Nothing Microsoft has ever done has been seamless.
Likely, loading an old IE-only site will require navigating through several layers of menus, helpfully titled things like "My Options" -> "My Internet Options" -> "Connections and Personalizations" -> HomeGroup"...to open a Windows 98 era control panel dialog and further clicking a third button in the second tab.
That won't work, of course, because a flag in My Security -> Privacy is unticked. You can find that but you can't tick
the only problem I see... (Score:2)
I appreciate what they're trying to do. There's still legacy websites that only work in IE, and this allows people to use a modern browser, which would supposedly be more secure, to access these websites.
The downside is that there's still legacy websites that only work in IE. And making them work with Edge only puts off the day that they finally go away. So, we go from having a Microsoft-only browser that you have to use for badly written websites, to ... having Microsoft-only browser that you have to us
Can't we please let IE just die already? (Score:2)
Here I was hoping that the recent story about the guys who were breaking IE would finally give the Web a boost by not having web pages need to screw around making special accommodations for IE quirks with additional code that had to be downloaded. Please, Microsoft... find it within yourselves to admit that IE was a horrible, horrible mistake, let the damned thing die instead of finding new ways to keep it alive, and let the Web cleanse itself through attrition of those IE-compliant web pages.
LOL (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
What about EdgeHTML mode? (Score:2)
Microsoft Edge Chromium IE (Score:1)
Is it actually going to be called Microsoft Chromium Edge, or Microsoft Edge Chromium with IE? Might as well just call it Thunder Cougar Falconbird!
a chrome addon already does this (Score:3, Informative)
.. one that's existed for ten years (ietab.net) and actually dates back to npapi plugin days (before its current webextensions version)
did microsoft 'develop' this one for edge from scratch, buy out the addon, or just swipe the code from it?
Web applications must die! (Score:1)
This "everything must be a web application" madness! This is just a money pit. I don't want my government to use my taxes just to keep up with a f***ing browser "standards / trends". A big pourcentage of project/maintenance is just to fix broken stuff in the latest new shinny browser. This is waste of resources and money. And before someone talk to me about security bugs: you can fix security issues without braking how HTML pages are parsed/rendered.
Honestly, the IT industry is just a big mess that always r
Re: (Score:2)
The web has become a standard cross platform runtime, or would you prefer they write apps in COBOL and require that you have your own mainframe? That's definitely "BORING, PROVEN and STABLE tech"...
If you write your webapp according to standards then it works in any reasonable browser and will continue to work in newer versions... The interoperability problems with webapps have come largely down to two things...
1, IE - not following standards, people targeting it and generating non standard code or writing
Um, no. (Score:2)
"Currently, the existing version of Edge will open Internet Explorer 11 on Windows 10, which has a separate interface, favorites, and doesn't work well on modern websites. This new IE mode literally loads the content within Edge, so you'd never be able to tell the difference, apart from a small IE logo on the tab that indicates that this mode has been enabled."
Don't you mean currently they exist side by side? IE11 doesn't "open inside Edge", wtf wrote this.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Hey, we have a secure modern browser (Score:2)
Meeting must have gone something like this;
- Hey team, now that we have a modern, secure browser, what can we do/add to it?
- What about the IE rendering engine?! You know, the one we said nobody should be using anymore.
- Great idea, make it happen!
Leave it to MS to fsck this one up...