For versions 7 and 8 of Internet Explorer, Microsoft made significant changes to MSHTML's layout capabilities to improve compliance with Web standards and add support for new technologies.

[6][7][8] MSHTML will continue to receive security updates[9] for the IE mode of Microsoft Edge until at least 2029.

It presents a COM interface for accessing and editing web pages in any COM-supported environment, like C++ and .NET.

Some other MSHTML-based applications include: Current versions of MSHTML, as of Internet Explorer 9, have introduced support for CSS 3, HTML5, and SVG, as well as other modern web standards.

[26] In 2014, MSHTML was forked to create the engine EdgeHTML for Microsoft Edge [Legacy] on Windows 10.

The new engine is "designed for interoperability with the modern web" and deprecates or removes a number of legacy components and behaviors, including document modes, ensuring that pure, standards-compliant HTML will render properly in browsers without the need for special considerations by web developers.