[Tip] Enable Classic Internet Explorer Mode in Microsoft Edge Web Browser
Microsoft is regularly updating its new Chromium-based Microsoft Edge web browser and adding new features. The company is also pushing the new web browser via Windows Update for Windows 10 and older Windows versions. In fact the newer versions of Windows 10 already come preinstalled with new Microsoft Edge web browser.
Still there are some old websites such as bank websites, organization, university websites which are not compatible with Microsoft Edge browser and users need to open them in Internet Explorer.
To solve this problem, Microsoft developed and implemented Internet Explorer Mode (IE Mode) in Microsoft Edge which can be used to open and visit incompatible websites using classic IE rendering engine right from Microsoft Edge browser.
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In other words, if a website is not compatible with Microsoft Edge browser and you need to open it in Internet Explorer, you can select IE Mode option in Microsoft Edge and the browser will open the website using IE engine without any need of leaving Microsoft Edge and launching Internet Explorer separately.
Following screenshot shows our website running in IE Mode inside Microsoft Edge web browser:
Initially IE Mode was a hidden secret feature and we needed to follow various steps to activate and enable it. We shared the method in following tutorial:
[Tip] Enable Hidden Secret IE Mode in Microsoft Edge Web Browser
Now newer versions of Microsoft Edge browser such as version 85 and later come with IE Mode preactivated and anyone can enable this feature using Microsoft Edge settings page.
If you also want to enable IE Mode in Microsoft Edge browser, following steps will help you:
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1. Open Microsoft Edge browser and click on the 3-dots menu button present at the right-side of the toolbar. Now select Settings option from the main menu.
Alternatively, you can press ALT+F keys together to show Edge Menu and then press S key to open Settings page.
You can also directly open Edge Settings page using edge://settings/ URL in address bar.
2. Now go to Default browser tab and in right-side pane, look for following option:
Allow sites to be reloaded in Internet Explorer mode
By default the option is turned off i.e. disabled. To enable IE Mode, set the option to ON i.e. enable it.
Microsoft Edge will ask to restart the browser, click on Restart button.
3. After restarting Microsoft Edge, open any website and again click on 3-dots menu button present at the right-side of the toolbar.
Now select “More Tools -> Reload in Internet Explorer Mode” option and Microsoft Edge will start loading the website using IE engine.
Anytime you want to leave the IE Mode, either click on Leave button showing at the top of the webpage or refresh the page or close the tab.
Also Check:
[Tip] Google Chrome Tips-n-Tricks Which Also Work in Microsoft Edge Browser
I use a local intranet Kguard security camera setup that requires a webplugin.exe file to be installed once. In IE this works fine, and thus every other time I can login into see our security camera okay.
However, trying to replicate this using IE mode in Edge “isn’t really IE mode at all” because it fails to allow this plugin to run or pickup the plugin that has previously been installed in IE. Thus, IE will have to stay around from quite sometime yet, in order to maintain access to older products.
John
Would have been really useful, but Microsoft have changed Edge again, so the options in Settings now only show an ‘Internet Explorer Compatibility’ option which doesn’t seem to add the menu options to the More tools menu 🙁