Simulating Internet Explorer retirement scenario

A little bit less than a year ago Microsoft announced that they are going to retire Internet Explorer 11 browser on June 15, 2022. Which is now almost 4 months away. They have also since posted an FAQ detailing all the steps and which versions of Windows can still have IE for some time (LTSC and Server). And explained that IE engine itself is not going away until at least 2029 for supported versions of Windows 10 and 11, it is just the browser itself that is going to be disabled. They also made advancements in Site List for IE mode management and made it possible to do it completely via Microsoft 365 console. IE mode is used in Edge to utilize IE engine to render older websites and systems that still rely on old technology. It is when i remembered about a new group policy they added in January of 2021 that enabled administrators to disable IE11. Which in turn allows to simulate disabling Internet Explorer before its official retirement date.

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Cloud managed Edge IE Mode site list [EN]

In my last article regarding IE Mode i have griped that MS allowed to host site list file in the cloud, but there was no option to actually modify and publish it using M365 console. Well, this is now fixed. Microsoft presented a new section in M365 Admin Console called Microsoft Edge site list, which allows to manage multiple site lists, add URLs, save versions and publish them. There is also an option to import xml file with a list. Then you can copy ID of such site list and use it in Intune device profile to push that site list and a setting to use it to selected groups of devices. Alternatively you can use ConfigMgr or regular group policies. Although it is not clear how you can use just ID with group policies. I think it still requires a path to the file. But if you are in Intune camp completely, then this is a nice way to get rid of hosting files manually in Azure and a nice way to have different rings of devices with different sets of sites that has to be opened with IE mode. More information in this article on MS Tech Community.

Enterprise Mode changes in Edge browser [EN]

3 years ago i have posted about enabling Enterprise Mode in Microsoft browsers, when we were migrating to IE11 on my previous job. It helped a lot as we still needed to open a few sites with older IE version. There was also an option to make sites open in Edge instead (or if you open a site in Edge, to redirect to IE). To make it work you had to add a few registry entries and store an xml file with URLs and settings somewhere for browsers to read. Currently we are moving to Chromium Edge in our environment (as Legacy Edge soon will stop being supported) and we want to make it easier for our users to use this new browser enabling them to reach legacy systems and sites. There were a few changes and improvements in Enterpise Mode regarding Edge since my last post that i wanted to share.

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Enabling Enterprise Mode for Internet Explorer 11 and Edge [EN]

In our organization we always had (and probably will) a few internal and external systems, which are working best with Internet Explorer. Better yet, with IE9. Actually it is even more complicated as we also had to enable Compatibility Mode for some sites via Group Policy for them to actually work properly with IE9 (i guess they were designed to work with IE7 or such..). While evaluating upgrade to IE11 we have found out, that in many cases standard IE11 won’t work. I have read before about the upcoming Enterprise Mode feature (if i remember correctly, it was enabled with an update in August of 2015, so if you install clean IE11 upgrade, it won’t have it until you install all the later updates from Windows Update or WSUS). So, after a lot of testing and trial i have made all our systems work with IE11 (well, almost, some of them still have minor issues). And i will share my findings here.

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