Microsoft makes improvements to IE11 for enterprises

Microsoft is continuing its crusade to wean customers off earlier versions of Internet Explorer before the Support Lifecycle changes kick in in January 2016.

The company has announced changes in its April update to Enterprise Mode and Enterprise Site Discovery in IE11 to provide enhanced backwards compatibility for sites designed to run in earlier versions of the browser.

It adds a new IE7 Enterprise Mode option which enables Enterprise Mode together with Compatibility View. This is based on customer feedback that some sites work best with both Enterprise Mode and Compatibility View enabled.

Put a site in IE7 Enterprise Mode and it will automatically use Enterprise Mode with IE7 document mode if there's a DOCTYPE in the markup, or fall back to IE5 document mode if there isn't a DOCTYPE. The previous Enterprise Mode is still there but renamed IE8 Enterprise Mode. There's also a new IE11 Document Mode replacing the earlier Edge Mode to call IE11 on Windows 10 systems. All of these options are available via the Enterprise Mode Site List Manager.

Enterprise Site Discovery adds XML as an output option either on its own or in conjunction with WMI output. The option of management by group policy is added too with four policies to give control over the output of the feature in addition to the parameters for privacy.

More information on these changes is available on the MSDN IE blog.