Ever since Microsoft has announced of disabling Microsoft Internet Explorer (MSIE) web browser from Windows, people have been wondering how would they download a new web browser without Internet Explorer. This is because many Windows users believe that the only time Internet Explorer was used when someone wanted to download a different web browser such as Firefox.
But there is nothing to worry for the Windows users as they can download web browsers using the PowerShell commands. A single command can download the full offline setup for the latest version of the Mozilla Firefox web browser or the Vivaldi web browsers.
Launch PowerShell
For downloading any of the web browsers, you have to first launch PowerShell. For this, you can click on the Start button, type PowerShell in the search box and then click on PowerShell shortcut when it appears. You can also press the Win+R hotkey and enter PowerShell in there to launch it.
Download Firefox with PowerShell
For downloading Firefox, you have to give the following command in the PowerShell window:
Invoke-WebRequest -Uri "https://download.mozilla.org/?product=firefox-latest&os=win64&lang=en-US" -OutFile "D:\Downloads\Firefox64.exe"
You should change the output file path according to where you want to download and save the Firefox setup. The above command downloads the latest version of Firefox setup for Windows 64-bit operating system in US English.
Download Vivaldi with PowerShell
For downloading the Vivaldi web browser (full offline installer for 64-bit Windows), you can give the following command:
Invoke-WebRequest -Uri "https://downloads.vivaldi.com/stable/Vivaldi.x64.exe" -OutFile "D:\Downloads\Vivaldi-64bit.exe"
During the download process, PowerShell will display the progress in the shell itself. When download is complete, you can use the downloaded setup package to install the respective web browser on your Windows PC. You can download all the other web browsers using the same method if you know their full download URLs. But once you have installed either Firefox or Vivaldi on your system, you can download pretty much anything.