You thought that Internet Explorer was dead? You shouldn't believe everything you read - except for the following...
Last week, there were many new stories proliferated suggesting that Internet Explorer is dead. But, that's just not correct. When Windows 10 ships, Internet Explorer will be back. Sure, a new web browser, the as yet officially unnamed Spartan Project, will come packed inside, but Internet Explorer will be there, too. Windows 10 will ship with two browsers, which is really not much different than Windows 8.1.
How do I know Internet Explorer isn't dead? Microsoft said so. In a recent update to the IEBlog, that talks about new enhancements for Internet Explorer, the IE team said this…
"Rumors of Internet Explorer’s demise have been greatly exaggerated! We encourage all of our customers to stay up-to-date on the latest version of Internet Explorer and we are continuing to make it easier to upgrade than ever before."
There's a bunch of reasons why Microsoft can't just pull the plug on Internet Explorer, all of which has to do with businesses, web compatibility, and legacy applications.
To prove that Internet Explorer still matters, and will continue to exist for some time after Windows 10, Microsoft announced a couple new enhancements that come as part of the March 2015 update.
First off, Enterprise Site Discovery is now available for versions 8, 9, and 10. Enterprise Site Discovery was introduced as an IE11-only capability in November of 2014. Used with Enterprise Mode IE, Enterprise Site Discovery is utilized to capture information about end-user site browsing habits. The information is then collected and provided in reports so you can better understand compatibility issues Internet Explorer.
Here's what gets captured when you enable it:
In addition to supplying support for IE 8, 9, and 10 for Enterprise Site Discovery, Microsoft rolled out additional privacy configuration options for site discovery, which enable IT staff to retrieve information about Zones and Domains (the last row in the previous table). This wasn't available in Internet Explorer 11, either, before the March update.
You can get the toolkit here: Enterprise Site Discovery Toolkit
…and, learn more about it here: Collect data using Internet Explorer Site Discovery
