As we continue to hear feedback from our customers, we are making investments in tools and features that help our customers get to Internet Explorer 11 before the January 12, 2016 support deadline. We encourage all of our customers to stay up-to-date on the latest version and to leverage features such as Enterprise Mode and Enterprise Site Discovery to do so.

Today, we’re announcing an update to Enterprise Mode and two new updates to Enterprise Site Discovery as part of the April 2015 Update.

Now supporting IE7 Enterprise Mode

Enterprise Mode can be very effective in providing backward compatibility for older Web apps. We initially released Enterprise Mode last April as a way to provide better compatibility for sites designed to run in Internet Explorer 8. In November, we expanded the functionality of the Enterprise Mode Site List to include the ability to put any Web app in any document mode, without changing a single line of code on the site.

Today we’re adding the last piece of the puzzle, by adding a new “IE7 Enterprise Mode” option which enables Enterprise Mode with Compatibility View. We’ve heard feedback from customers that some sites work best with both Enterprise Mode and Compatibility View. You could do this by adding the site to the Enterprise Mode section of the Enterprise Mode Site List in combination with the Display intranet sites in Compatibility View setting or a group policy, but this was difficult. We’re excited to announce the expansion of Enterprise Mode to natively support a single mode that includes Compatibility View and Enterprise Mode. If you put a site in IE7 Enterprise Mode, 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. This higher-fidelity emulation will help customers upgrade to Internet Explorer 11 easier than ever before.

As part of this change, we are renaming the original Enterprise Mode to “IE8 Enterprise Mode” to distinguish between the two high-fidelity emulation modes. Last, “IE11 Document Mode” is replacing “Edge Mode,” to explicitly call Internet Explorer 11 on Windows 10. We will have more to share on this at Microsoft Ignite.

If you are currently using Enterprise Mode, you don’t need to make any changes to your existing site list. These new options are now available through the Enterprise Mode Site List Manager, or you can edit the XML file directly using the new schema.

Updated Enterprise Mode Site List tool

Enterprise Site Discovery XML Output and Group Policy Management

The April update adds XML as an output option that can be used exclusively or in conjunction with the existing WMI output and enables management via group policy. This update complements the March 2014 update by also bringing this functionality to IE8, IE9 and IE10.

To improve the management experience for this feature we are introducing a set of Group Policies that can be used once the feature is configured on the end point via PowerShell. We provide four Group Policies to give you control over the output of the feature in addition to the parameters for Privacy features introduced last month. You can read more about both updates on Technet.

With the XML output now available, the Enterprise Site List Manager has been updated to support bulk import of these XML files to support building of the Enterprise Mode Site List. This update will allow an IT Pro to use the output of Enterprise Site discovery to directly seed their Enterprise Mode Site List. This couples the ability to assess the problem with Enterprise Site Discovery and remediate compatibility issues with Enterprise Mode Site List by putting sites into a mode where they work.

Bulk import option for Site List manager & new Launch In options in the site list manager tool

How to get started using this update

• Download the improved Enterprise Site List Manager tool.
• Learn more about Enterprise Mode and how to turn it on.
• Download the Enterprise Site Discovery Toolkit and deploy the group policy
• Read up on Enterprise Site Discovery on Technet
• Update Internet Explorer 8, 9, 10, or 11 with the latest Cumulative updates (April 2014 or later)

We’re excited about these new improvements and encourage you to try them out! Let us know your feedback on Twitter at @IEDevChat or on Connect.

— Deen King-Smith, Program Manager
— Fred Pullen, Senior Product Marketing Manager