Should HTML meta tags be avoided for Edge?

Question

When one of our users tries to open our site in Edge, it instead opens in IE. I understand there are some settings on their machine that may trigger this based on my research (group policies, intranet sites, compatibility modes, etc.)

In looking, I found this MS page https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/deploy/emie-to-improve-compatibility

It says that "You must continue using IE11 if web apps use... <meta> tags". I don't know if this means that any and all <meta> tags will trigger the "open it in IE" behavior, or if they're just recommending it.

I also thought things like <meta charset="UTF-8" /> were highly important. We also use a <meta> tag to indicate viewport dimensions/scaling/etc.

Should I avoid all <meta> tags? Or just <meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=edge"> ? I need to prevent the site from kicking over to IE from my end of things without relying on whatever the user has done to their settings (if possible).

Answer 1

I would like to know if your website is intranet site, if so, since Edge has a group policy ​which opens all the intranet sites in IE, you could try the following steps:

1. Open Local Group Policy Editor.
2. Select "Administrative Templates".
3. Select "Windows Components".
4. Select "Microsoft Edge". Once you double click "Microsoft edge" you will see different settings & their current state.
5. Select "Send all intranet sites to Internet Explorer 11" and then "Disabled" it.
6. Quit Edge & re-start (if required you might re-start your PC as well).