We often used "Internet options" in control panel in the age of IE.
but since IE is dead now, are these options still relevant?
I have feeling only some of the options are relevant, but which ones?
any why are these internet options still present in control panel anyway?
using: W10 1909, MS Edge-Chromium
Internet Explorer is tightly integrated with various Windows APIs that windows developers use to make software for windows. If Internet Explorer was gone from Windows 10, lots of software would stop working. You might be thinking that Internet Explorer 11 came out in 2013 with the last proper version released in 2015 and Microsoft Edge in 2015, so nobody needs to use software that's so old.
However lots of companies are using custom made software that's not for sale that only they have access to. So lots of companies worldwide need to trust Microsoft that their software will continue to work in newer versions of Windows 10 and that Windows has backwards compatibility. Something that macs are terrible at.
Time is money. Not everyone has the time to rewrite their retro software from scratch just to make the code more modern. Users don't care about whether the technology used to do the programming is old or new, just as long as the software works
Internet Explorer has various APIs which are exclusive to Windows
- ActiveX
- COM Plugins (these power the toolbars)
- Browser Helper Objects
- Support for DHTML
- Support for VML vector images
- Some email clients use Trident to render HTML emails, like Microsoft Outlook, Windows Live Mail, Outlook Express.
- Support for various plugins like Adobe Flash, Adobe Shockwave and Microsoft Silverlight as an ActiveX plugin (instead of NPAPI or PPAPI)
- Third party web browsers which use Internet Explorer's rendering engine, Trident, require Internet Explorer to be installed
- Ability to switch the rendering engine to previous versions of Internet Explorer, like 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10
- Support for Internet Explorer Quirks Mode
- Support for Compatibility View to ensure that websites designed for older versions of Internet Explorer that used crafty yet non-protocol coding practises, can still work in newer versions
- Support for EOT Fonts
- Various third party software made in the 1990s and 2000s, especially video games, financial software, media players and e-learning, use Internet Explorer's Trident rendering engine for browsing the internet, as they make use of MSHTML.dll
Last edited by desbest; 19 May 2021 at 17:55.
To add, I've read where Windows 7 is still supported for those companies running proprietary software such as in the medical field but they are paying extra for that support. Probably will be that way until all software is updated to work with Win10. Every once in awhile I'll see mentioned something about 'mainstream support has ended', probably what is referring to.
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