Force update of Enterprise Mode Site list in Edge

When working with application compatibility, or in this case web application compatibility, you have for sure heard about Enterprise Mode in Internet Explorer and Microsoft Edge. This feature will make sure old websites will open in correct document mode in Internet Explorer (or for newer websites in Edge).

Normally you are working with the Enterprise Mode Site List Manager to add, edit and remove websites to the list, and preferable store this XML file on central web server. (UNC and local file path does not work with Edge)

Every time you save the list it till increment the version by 1. The next time you restart Edge it will go look for the version number on central place and compare it with your local copy saved in the registry.

Normally you would think you can delete the registry key, clean the cache in Edge and to force download of a new site list, unfortunately this is does not work! Why? So how does this work? I started Process Monitor to see.

Edge is starting and connecting to my web server (in my lab located on DC-1, don’t do this in production!) and the file is cached – in Internet Explorer cache!

To force download a new version of the Enterprise Mode Site list this is the steps you have to take

• Open Internet Explorer, open Internet options
  
• Click Delete… and check Temporary Internet files and website files and click Delete
  
• Now the cached file is removed. Restart Edge and the version number in registry is updated, and your new sites are added.
  

Normally this is not a problem since the cached copy is check every once and a while, but when you are testing you want things to happen fast and this I how you do!

References for Enterprise Mode

Internet Explorer and January 12 2016

Updates to Enterprise Mode for IE11

Website compatibility with Edge and Enterprise Mode