Doesn't Microsoft have an end-of-life date set after which they will only support Edge? It seems like the IE horse is guaranteed to drop out of this race.
Looks like the customer would have to download the Edge driver from Microsoft, picking the right version (and supposedly update the drivers as Edge auto-updates).
That's a complete non-starter, compared to automating IE that just requires our .exe to create an IE object via CoCreateInstance(CLSID_InternetExplorerMedium ...), and no additional installation by the customer organization.
Edge is MS's current browser... IE11 was an incremental release over IE10 and several years old at this point. Most browsers update very frequently. IE never did.
Maybe you need to look at whoever locked said computers down to ONLY support IE? Chrome and Firefox are both better options at this point. It really isn't MS's fault that an organization can't be bothered to update their software for what, 4 years now?
As someone actually working in operations, and keeping our current suite of software/apps/etc compatable with these upgrades, I say - Microsoft, your documentation is very poor and lacking, and I have to invent fixes to your lack of effort... probably by design.
It is annoying when we can quickly proof up software, and specialized utilities when consulting with business. It is wayyyy to much work to port from IE to Edge though.. yeesh, waste of my productive time.
It makes logical sense that MS would start with Edge, but I can see (for standards compliance) them expanding to work with other browsers too; it would be too great a selling point not to use.
While this might be crappy of them, I'm welcoming of MS making Edge easy to install on my system. I haven't installed Windows in a while, but I'm guessing Edge ships with the OS. I recall being in a situation where I had to use IE to download a workable browser and it was a nightmare. Not sure what situation would have required that. Maybe it was an early install of Win 10.
I've found edge to just be an auto-updated version of IE. Microsoft still thinks they're special, so they don't have to implement some functionality all other browsers do. I would highly prefer all of my users to be on Firefox or Chrome, or else I still end up writing special code for 'Internet Edge'.
Maybe we're talking at cross-purposes, but you seem to be saying that
(a) it doesn't matter that there was no support for a feature planned for IE, because it is planned for Edge
and
(b) IE and Edge are essentially the same browser, and one is just the upgrade for the other.
I contend that this is what Microsoft's marketing department would like everyone to think, but the reality in larger organisations (and for those developing web sites and apps aimed at those organisations) is that they are two completely different browsers. In many cases, the only way you can "upgrade" from one to the other would be literally upgrading the entire organisation's standard desktop environment, including the OS.
If you're going to contend that a missing feature in one product is only an upgrade issue because you can change the entire OS and then install a completely different product to do the same job and then get that feature then I don't know what wouldn't be "just" an upgrade issue.
Edge cannot have feature parity. For example, it will not support plugins. I don't think they can drop IE from Windows due to enterprise use and LOB applications.
Unfortunately this one is impossible even if every developer and browser vendor were all unanimously in favor. Edge-née-IE is evergreen now, but users have to upgrade Windows first, and that's not something that can be forced.
I think it's more that just Edge. They force their "Microsoft store". This is just another step in their plan to limit execution of programs that come from other sources.
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