”Is Internet Explorer (IE) a browser? According to Microsoft, no. Today, it’s a ‘compatibility solution’ for enterprise customers to deal with legacy sites that should be updated for modern browsers.
Chris Jackson, Microsoft’s worldwide lead for cybersecurity, really doesn’t want enterprise customers to use IE for all web traffic, even though for some organizations that would be the easiest option.
Companies in that situation are willing to take on ‘technical debt’, such as paying for extended support for a legacy software, but that habit needs to stop in the case of IE, argues Jackson in a new blog post, ‘The perils of using Internet Explorer as your default browser’.
The main gist of Jackson’s argument is you should only use IE selectively for internal sites that need it, pointing to tools like Enterprise Mode Site List in IE 11 that help customers make the transition and limit IE use to where it’s needed.
Jackson doesn’t even consider IE to be a browser, at least in the modern, standards-based sense.
“You see, Internet Explorer is a compatibility solution,” wrote Jackson in the blog. “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.”
