Microsoft has revived a practice from the heydays of Internet Explorer (IE), releasing tools to block the new all-Chromium Edge from automatically reaching Windows 10 PCs starting next month.When deployed and run, the Blocker Toolkit will retain the original Edge, the one built with Microsoft's homegrown rendering and JavaScript engines and bundled with Windows 10 since its mid-2015 debut.
Its tools, like other such kits before it, included a very small executable to run locally, as well as an administrative template that IT admins can use to broadly block original-Edge through Group Policy settings.[ Related: Windows 7 to Windows 10 migration guide ]Microsoft issued similar toolkits for IE7, IE8, IE9, IE10 and IE11 prior to the public release of those browsers, usually as a sop to business customers who don't want to disrupt workflows with a new application they has not yet tested.
The toolkits became progressively more important because Microsoft accelerated the IE development and release tempo and changed how it distributed the browser.