Updates simply include more security fixes or design changes, not all of which get applied as patches to the older versions. It’s more standards-compliant and it’s faster than previous versions. The reason I recommend always updating to the latest IE is actually twofold: one, Internet Explorer has fundamentally become a better browser. But for the vast majority of people it is indeed a safe upgrade. These days it’s actually pretty good.Īs with any product, some small number of people are absolutely going to have issues. In the past, Internet Explorer had some rocky updates, and in some ways it got a bad reputation because of that. These days, the number of people who report problems due to the update is significantly smaller than it has been in the past. In general, I recommend always taking the latest Internet Explorer update.

I want to talk a little bit about why you should take the update, and my theory on why it changed from “optional” to “important”. Now, I’m not really sure what the criteria for important or optional might be according to Microsoft, but in general, my tendency would be to take the update. Instead, as you noted, IE 11 is included immediately with Windows Update. Windows Update would actually show you IE 10, if that was what you needed first. Let me answer the last part first: no, you won’t need to install IE 10 before IE 11.

Install internet explorer 11