Internet Explorer 11
Internet Explorer 11 is the eleventh and final version of the Internet Explorer web browser by Microsoft. It was officially released on October 17, 2013 along with Windows 8.1 and on November 7, 2013 for Windows 7. Windows Vista and earlier are not supported. The browser was also shipped with Windows 10 on its release on July 29, 2015, but Microsoft Edge is the default browser in this version of Windows. It is the default browser shipped with Windows Server 2016 and Windows Server 2019.
Since January 12, 2016, only the most recent version of Internet Explorer offered for installation on any given Windows operating system is supported with security updates, lasting until the end of the support lifecycle for that Windows operating system. On Windows 7 and 8.1, only Internet Explorer 11 will receive security updates for the remainder of those Windows versions' support lifecycles. Internet Explorer 11 was made available for Windows Server 2012 and Windows Embedded 8 Standard in April 2019. It is the only supported version of Internet Explorer on these operating systems since January 31, 2020.
Changes
IE11 features redesigned developer tools, support for WebGL, enhanced scaling for high DPI screens, prerender and prefetch. After launch IE11 got support for HTTP/2. In addition, IE11 supports Full Screen and Orientation APIs, CSS border image support, JavaScript enhancements, DOM mutation observers, Web Cryptography API, video text track support, encrypted media support and an improved HTML editor. IE11 uses Transport Layer Security v1.2 as the default protocol for secure connections and deprecates RC4 cipher suite.Internet Explorer 11 for Windows RT does not support Java and other add-ons.
Removed features
- IE11 has deprecated
document.all
, meaning that code that checks for its presence will not detect it, but code that actually uses it will continue to work. Additionally, theattachEvent
proprietary API has been removed. - Quick Tabs
- Work Offline command removed from File menu
- Drag and drop of selected content from IE to other programs like Word or WordPad
- Use large icons for command buttons
- Some Group Policy settings are no longer supported.
- Ability to view all cookies at once via Developer Tools
- Ability to disable tabbed browsing
- autocomplete="off" for input type="password"
Added features
- KB3058515 released on June 9, 2015 added HTTP Strict Transport Security support to IE 11.
- KB3139929 bundles a patch which adds advertising of Windows 10 upgrade offer to the new tab page.
Performance
In August 2015, SitePoint again benchmarked IE11 in its review for Microsoft Edge, where Edge 12, Chrome 44 and Firefox 39 were also present. IE11 came last in Apple's JetStream test and Google's Octane test but it came second in Microsoft's "fish aquarium" test, after Edge.
History
Though an internal build of IE11 was leaked on March 25, 2013, its first preview version was not formally released until June 2013, during the Build 2013 conference, along with the preview release of Windows Server 2012 R2 and Windows 8.1. On July 25, 2013, Microsoft released the developer preview of Internet Explorer 11 for Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2.Name | Version | Release date | Works on | New features |
rowspan=2 | rowspan=2 | Windows 8.1 | WebGL, CSS border image, improved JavaScript performance, major update to Internet Explorer Developer Tools, hardware-accelerated JPEG decoding, closed captioning, HTML5 full screen, HTML5 prerender, HTML5 prefetch, Windows 8.1 only: cryptography, adaptive bitrate streaming, Encrypted Media Extensions, SPDY v3 | |
Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 | - | - | WebGL, CSS border image, improved JavaScript performance, major update to Internet Explorer Developer Tools, hardware-accelerated JPEG decoding, closed captioning, HTML5 full screen, HTML5 prerender, HTML5 prefetch, Windows 8.1 only: cryptography, adaptive bitrate streaming, Encrypted Media Extensions, SPDY v3 | |
Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 | Performance improvements | |||
Windows 7, Windows 8.1, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Server 2012 and Windows Server 2012 R2 | Update Versions: 11.0.200 | |||
Windows 10, Windows Server 2016 and Windows Server 2019 | Released in Windows 10. Microsoft Edge is the default browser from Microsoft in this version of Windows. | |||
Internet Explorer 11 | 11.0.17134.1610 | April 30, 2018 | Windows 10 | Update Version: 11.0.126 |
Internet Explorer 11 | 11.0.18362.997 | May 21, 2019 | Windows 10 | Released in Windows 10 update KB4516046 |
While there were no other releases of Internet Explorer, an update for Windows 7 and 8.1 was released on April 2, 2014 which added Enterprise Mode, improved developer tools, improved support for WebGL and ECMAScript 5.1.