Microsoft Edge will take you back in time with new Internet Explorer mode
Microsoft recently announced that its own Microsoft Edge browser would be moving over to Chromium, the open source project that underpins Google’s Chrome browser. But wait, there’s more.
Microsoft has announced on Monday that the next version of Edge, the one with all the Chromium powering the show, will come with an Internet Explorer mode, allowing users to run web pages that no longer support newer browser technology.
This won’t mean much to you if you’re not religiously checking Warner Bros. Space Jam website, but at an enterprise level, many workers are stuck using nearly-antique webpages to function day to day, so this is a huge bonus. This multiplies when you consider that this oft-bespoke software would take more work to fix for a potentially overstretched IT team then merely installed Edge on every computer.
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It’s a use case that anyone that’s glared at an office computer will be familiar with, although every terrible work PC i’ve been lumbered with has also come with a comically out of date install of Internet Explorer, so hopefully this will encourage some companies to upgrade.
In addition, Microsoft is adding some heavy-duty privacy controls to the browser. This mostly takes the form of a toggle between three modes: unrestricted, balanced and strict. As you can imagine, these do pretty much what they say on the label, but should let users have a better level of control over what they do and don’t share with websites they visit on the net, and should offer some peace of mind without requiring you to dive an InPrivate window, Edge’s answer to Chrome’s incognito mode.
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You can check out the preview for Edge browser, providing you’re on Windows 10, at the Microsoft Edge Insider site. There’s no word on when it’ll fully release, but the Fall update for Windows 10 would be a safe enough bet.
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Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
