I will give it a try if the new browser no longer supports ActiveX and has better extension supports similar to Chrome.
Intranet is more liberal. But a lot of enterprises add their internal portals to the trusted list if they still depend on ActiveX (as a depressingly large number do).
Chrome and Firefox's extensions are better. Although Firefox's extension model is a little clunky due to how old it is (or at least it was last time I used it).
[0]: http://www.extremetech.com/computing/182428-ironic-iframes-a... [1]: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/%C2%B5block/cjpalh...
New-style "Jetpack" add-ons in Firefox and add-ons in Chrome are very similar. I have the same add-on for both platforms, and there's about 80% code commonality. If Microsoft does something reasonably similar, that would be convenient for add-on developers.
First couple of Google results:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa744101(v=vs.85).as...
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5643819/developing-intern...
Or possibly because the API's microsoft proposes are pretty horrible; I've worked on FF and chrome extensions, and I investigated IE support - but IE's extension model is truly terrible. Just take a look at that stackoverflow link you posted. What a mess. I wouldn't mind a clean C++ or .NET api, but the current API certainly isn't that.
With the IE model, you need to create a VS project, add a ton of boilerplate (see that stackoverflow example), and generally it's a ton of work just to get started. With a Chrome extension, you get an itch (some website has some jank, or you just want to hide all images with a certain dimension), you peek at it with the inspector, write some lines of JS or a custom CSS file, add an XML file and you're good to go.
Being able to write a quick hack to scratch an itch makes the Chrome/FF/Safari model more approachable. Once you have your foot in the door you're then more likely to make the step to write a full-featured extension (your MVP gave you a bunch of ideas).
It's similar to why PHP is popular. "I have this HTML page and I just want to add this one dynamic visitor counter. Do I want to build a Rails application, or paste in 3 lines of PHP and change the filename extension?"