The technology giant will no longer supply updates or support for versions 8, 9 and 10 of its Internet Explorer program, as the company continues to migrate towards its new Microsoft Edge browser.
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Four out of five companies and municipalities in Japan face a deadline of sorts Wednesday, the day Microsoft Corp. ends technical support for older versions of its Internet Explorer (IE) browser.
At present, more than 80% of them are using Microsoft’s PC operating systems and 30% to 40% of them are using the older versions of the Internet Explorer. Customers using the outdated browsers will be sent an “end-of-life upgrade notification” as technical support and security updates have now ceased.
Those who have set their Windows computers to receive automatic updates are likely already using Internet Explorer 11. And, somewhat surprisingly, the company will also continue supporting Internet Explorer 9 on machines running Windows Vista Service Pack 2, at least for now. The table below shows which version you need to be running to ensure you’re receiving updates which should fix any security vulnerabilities. Right click on iexplore.exe and set its value (hexadecimal) to 1, click OK and restart Internet Explorer. That could potentially expose a good portion of online users to malware, if they choose not to upgrade, Microsoft warns. If you don’t see a gear icon, then you have a very old version of Internet Explorer installed.
NetMarketShare estimates that Internet Explorer accounts for 57 percent of the browser market, compared with 25 percent for Chrome, 12 percent for Firefox and 5 percent for Apple’s Safari. Enterprise Mode in IE 11 enables users to run many legacy web applications that were designed for older IE versions by emulating IE 7 or IE 8. It has a lot of feature improvements and it will get a lot more attention from Microsoft’s developers when it comes to updates and security patches.
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So, what should you do if you have one of those versions? In spite of its supposed flaws and drawbacks, it still remains a widely used program around the world and is the default browser that any Windows OS uses. Windows 10 users are hardly affected by the changes because the built-in browser is the Edge browser.
