Microsoft requires their customers to regularly upgrade and stay up to-date with Internet Explorer 11, which is the currently available latest version. Recently, at the TechEd Europe event, Microsoft made two interesting announcements in this regard.
In November, Microsoft will expand the functionality of the Enterprise Mode Site List for Internet Explorer 11 to include all document modes. Microsoft says they have listened to customer feedback and the list will now give better control over which document mode will be used for remediating Web app compatibility.
With the help of the above mentioned new feature, web applications will be able to render in any document mode including IE10, IE9, IE8, IE7, and IE5. There will be no need to modify a single line of code on the Web site.
According to official sources, the next major version of Internet Explorer will leverage the backward compatibility features from Internet Explorer 11 in addition to enterprise mode, enterprise site discovery, and document modes.
Microsoft point out that if you upgrade to Internet Explorer 11, it will simplify migrations as and when Windows 10 is released.
“We will continue to improve support for modern standards and legacy compatibility, to make it even easier for customers to stay up-to-date with the latest browser,” said Fred Pullen, Senior Product Marketing Manager, Internet Explorer, Microsoft.
In order to upgrade to Internet Explorer 11 for Windows 7 and 8.1 users, you just need to enable automatic update. However, I feel that enabling auto updates make your system slow if you are using older laptops and PCs.
Microsoft recently announced that older versions of Internet Explorer (8, 9 and 10) will not receive any technical support and security updates starting from January 12, 2016. You will get support for enterprise mode in Internet Explorer 11 until January 14, 2020.
The recently released Enterprise Site Discovery Toolkit for Internet Explorer 11 enable IT pros to better understand how their organization is using web apps. The toolkit also collects the zone, crash counts and other relevant information.