Stupid Question 133: Where did my Modern UI Internet Explorer go?

[To celebrate my first year of programming I will ask a ‘stupid’ questions daily on my blog for a year, to make sure I learn at least 365 new things during my second year as a developer]

Can’t find your modern UI IE browser? Make IE your default!

When I was writing up the post about the metatags that you could use to connect your website with the Windows Store App I had a weird problem. I couldn’t find my Modern UI IE browser. I just couldn’t find it. It took me a bit to figure it out. Turns out that if you don’t have Internet Explorer as default browser you wont be able to open the Modern UI IE browser, the fullscreen tablet version.

Why?

A Metro style enabled desktop browser may participate in the Metro style user experience only if it is the default browser… The restriction to limit Metro style user experience participation to the user’s default browser is rooted in preserving the Metro style user experience.

I’m not sure I’m buying that.. but oh well. I got the answer to my question, and some ideas for workarounds here it’s not really a big issue for me. Maybe this changes, if it does and I haven’t updated the post let me know :)

Comments

This is totally *not* a stupid question -- I was wondering where Metro IE went after setting Chrome as my default browser. Now I know. Thanks! 

LOL yeah it was so frustrating :D 

If that was a stupid question then that must mean I'm stupid! ;-) I wondered where the Modern UI Internet Explorer browser went too. 

Last modified on 2013-01-22