We have identified it was coming, however now it is upon us: Web Explorer, Microsoft’s once-dominant web browser, formally dies in the present day, Wednesday, June 15.
Customers making an attempt to entry Web Explorer from tomorrow might be directed in direction of Microsoft Edge, the corporate’s fashionable Chromium-based browser that, whereas first rate, hasn’t managed to meaningfully problem Google Chrome. For individuals who use purposes unique to Web Explorer 11, you’ll entry these by way of Edge’s Web Explorer mode.
The dying of Web Explorer will not bother many individuals. In response to Statcounter, 67% of desktop browsers worldwide use Chrome, below 10% use Safari, and simply over 9% use Edge. Firefox and Opera are available in after that, at 8% and three% respectively. The “different” class is simply over 3%.
However should you’re of a sure age, it’s possible you’ll really feel a pang of remorse on the snuffing of IE’s meagre flame. Web Explorer 2.0 was the primary “free” browser and got here preloaded with Home windows, a transfer that just about rang the dying knell of beforehand dominant browser Netscape Navigator (sure: there was a time once you wanted to pay for an online browser, or faux you had been a scholar and obtain the tutorial model). Within the early 2000s, you just about ran both Web Explorer, or should you had been actually cool, Firefox. When Google Chrome got here alongside, it shortly ate everybody’s lunch, and ever since, nobody’s managed to usurp it.
Microsoft has actually put its weight behind Microsoft Edge, although, as any person of Home windows 10 can attest: generally making an attempt to keep away from it in favour of Chrome or one other different appears like swatting a virus. Edge turned Home windows 10’s default browser in 2015, although Web Explorer has continued to look on new gadgets because of these aforementioned IE apps that, these days, in all probability only a few nonetheless use.
![Shaun Prescott]()
Shaun Prescott is the Australian editor of PC Gamer. With over ten years expertise masking the video games trade, his work has appeared on GamesRadar+, TechRadar, The Guardian, PLAY Journal, the Sydney Morning Herald, and extra. Particular pursuits embody indie video games, obscure Metroidvanias, speedrunning, experimental video games and FPSs. He thinks Lulu by Metallica and Lou Reed is an all-time traditional that can obtain its due important reappraisal sooner or later.
