This week, Premier Developer Consultant Pat Altimore brings us this very timely post on upgrading Internet Explorer.

On January 12, 2016, only the most current version of Internet Explorer available for Windows will be supported.  For older OS such as Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2, you will need to upgrade to IE11. Even if you don’t use IE on a PC such as a server, you should upgrade to the latest version of the IE browser.

Why Upgrade?

There are many components that constitute the browser.  Most of the components are part of the operating system including the JavaScript / HTML rendering engine (MSHTML.dll), the Web Browser control (ieframe.dll), and the Windows Internet Protocol Handler (WinInet.dll). The browser application (IExplore.exe) uses these OS components for script execution, rendering, HTTP requests, etc.  When you upgrade the browser, you potentially upgrade all of these components…

Read the rest of the article at Pat’s Windows Development Blog.

EDIT: For more information on this Internet Explorer upgrade, check out Mary Jo Foley’s article “Stuck on an older version of Microsoft’s IE? There’s a mode for that” on ZDNet which also features a link to Pat’s blog.