Today is the day when Microsoft finally bids its farewell to Internet Explorer. The browser, originally introduced in 1995, was the default portal to the internet for decades. So much so that the icon became synonymous with the internet. On June 15 2022, Microsoft officially ends its support for Internet Explorer in favor of Microsoft Edge. Microsoft Edge has been available since 2015.
For many years, Internet Explorer has been a thorn in the side of web developers. Because of its lacking support for standards and newer techniques it often required workarounds for websites to work as intended. Personally, I remember working on sites that had separate stylesheets for several versions of Internet Explorer. With its market share dwindling, a lot of websites have since stopped explicitly supporting Internet Explorer.
A legacy too long
Up until very recently, Internet Explorer was also still the preferred browser for users of screen readers. This is visible in the results of the latest WebAIM Screen Reader Survey. The popularity of the browser for this use has declined steadily in recent years.
Safety has also been a recurring issue with the aging browser. So why has Microsoft supported it until now? A lot of software, especially business and enterprise software, have depended on certain features of Internet Explorer. Businesses are slow to upgrade, to help this transition Microsoft Edge provides an IE Mode to support these legacy features.
As for Can I Play That? we added support for Internet Explorer 11 in some way up until now. We will be phasing that out as we continue improving our website. Our analytics tells us we currently have a handful of visitors still using Internet Explorer each month. We hope these visitors follow us on a newer, more accessible browser as we move away from Internet Explorer.
