Windows 8 comes with Internet Explorer 10, if you have used Windows 8 Consumer Preview you already know that IE10 has two flavors, one desktop app and another Metro style app. Microsoft call it Metro style enabled desktop browser, although they run on a single rendering engine, they offer two different user experiences, one on the desktop and one on Metro.
When you click any link in the metro interface it opens Metro IE10 and if you click any link when on the desktop it opens desktop flavor of the browser. This is confusing and if you prefer only one flavor that is either desktop or Metro, you can change the default behavior of the browser.
Metro style IE10 is clean and simple but lacks several options which should be available like basic tasks like sharing web pages, printing etc., and also it won’t support plugins like Flash player, this is not only annoying but irritates when you have to switch to desktop mode to open some sites.
Users can override this behavior using the Programs tab of the Internet Properties dialog, Microsoft writes in a blogpost. Change the options that suit your needs from this dialog box. The options are “Let Internet Explorer decide”, this will open links depending on the environment you are in, if you are in Metro, then Metro IE will launch. Next option is “Always in Internet Explorer”, this option will launch links in Metro. The third option is “Always in Internet Explorer on the desktop”, this option will launch links in desktop browser.
For these settings to work IE10 should be the default browser in the system, if it is not then the options won’t be accessible.
Another option is how the pinned site tiles on Metro will launch, there is a checkbox in the Programs tab of the Internet Properties dialog. if you check the option ‘Open Internet Explorer tiles on the desktop’ then these links will open on the desktop IE and if unchecked they will launch in Metro IE10.
If you think all this hassle is unnecessary wait for the Firefox for Metro and Chrome for Metro browsers to launch hopefully by the time Windows 8 Final launches.
