Is it possible to open Microsoft Edge from a page rendered in Internet Explorer via just HTML/JavaScript?

Question

Windows 10 ships with both modern Microsoft Edge browser, and the legacy Internet Explorer 11.

Based on analytics, I suspect some of my Windows 10 users use IE11 and are perhaps not aware of having Edge browser.

Is it possible to create a link in HTML which opens the website in Edge, if the user is on IE11 on Win10?

jakub.g jakub.g · Accepted Answer · 2018-12-13T16:16:46

It's possible to open a URL in Edge Spartan thanks to microsoft-edge: protocol. This works in any browser on Windows 10. For example:

<a href="microsoft-edge:https://www.cnn.com">CNN</a>

Note however that this does not (yet?) work with Edge Chromium.

Checking if browser is IE11 on Windows 10 can be done for example as follows:

if (document.documentMode === 11 && navigator.userAgent.indexOf('Windows NT 10.0') > -1) {
    ...
}

If you want to create an Edge link to the current page (without hardcoding), you can do it with JavaScript:

myAnchor.href = 'microsoft-edge:' + document.URL;