Internet Explorer (IE), the 27-year-old browser and the butt of many jokes due to its speed, is finally saying goodbye. One of the internet’s oldest, and at one time most dominant browsers, ceased to be relevant sometime back with Microsoft hammering in the final nail in its coffin via a blog post, saying “Internet Explorer 11 desktop application will be retired and go out of support on June 15, 2022, for certain versions of Windows 10”. 

While Microsoft is pushing Edge as its browser of choice, there’s a way to continue using IE – the browser that users earlier went to, in order to download more favoured browsers like Chrome, Firefox, and Safari, among others. 

The Internet Explorer mode is built into Microsoft’s Edge browser and if activated, users can access sites and applications that are supported by Explorer. This also includes site support, like ActiveX controls, which aid functionality. 

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To use IE on Edge, it needs to be activated first. This is done by first opening Edge, and then clicking on the ellipsis button (…) located on the top right of the screen. 

Users then have to select “Settings” and go to the “Default Browser” option. Then, users need to navigate to the “Internet Explorer compatibility” section and toggle the switch labelled “Allow sites to be reloaded in Internet Explorer mode”. 

Below the toggle button is the restart option. This needs to be hit so the browser can come up with the applied changes. 

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Once this process is done, users have to go to the site they want to open in the IE mode. Clicking on the ellipses in the top right reveals the “Reload in Internet Explorer mode” button which needs to be tapped. If the ellipses menu cannot be found, the “More tools” submenu will include this option. 

With this feature, users can continue to open sites in the IE mode, which becomes especially useful since some old websites might not be updated to be compatible with newer browsers.