Microsoft Internet Explorer
Internet Explorer arrived at a time when Netscape was the master
of the game. Internet Explorer 1.0 debuted with the second version
of Microsoft Windows 95 that was called, simply enough, “Windows
95 with Internet Explorer.” When Windows 95 first made its appearance
in July 1995 it included inbuilt support for dial-up networking
and TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol) plus
other key technologies for connecting to the Internet. However, it
still depended on third party browsers, which at that time meant
Netscape.
With growing acceptance of the Internet, Microsoft suddenly
realised the potential of bundling in its own browser and thus
Internet Explorer (IE) was born. Internet Explorer technology was
originally shipped as the Internet Jumpstart Kit in Microsoft Plus!
For Windows 95. Internet Explorer replaced the need for cumbersome,
manual installation steps required by many of the existing
shareware browsers.
Internet Explorer 2.0 arrived in November 1995 and was the first cross platform browser released by Microsoft and worked on
both Macintosh and 32-bit Windows. Internet Explorer 2.0 technology
introduced Secure Socket Layer (SSL) protocol as well as
support for HTTP cookies, Virtual Reality Modeling Language
VRML), and Internet newsgroups.
The next big Microsoft browser release was Internet Explorer
3.0 in August 1996, which had a completely rebuilt core and considered
one of the best browsers of the time. This browser was
designed for Windows 95 and included features that users immediately
took to such as Internet Mail and News 1.0 and Windows
Address Book. Later, Microsoft NetMeeting and Windows Media
Player were also released. Internet Explorer could now display GIF and JPG files, play MIDI sound files and streaming audio files
without the assistance of other applications. For Web programmers,
though it was a different story altogether, since IE3
allowed for a choice of scripting languages and also Cascading
Style Sheets (CSS).
Moving onwards, Internet Explorer 4 made its debut in 1997
and was designed for Windows 95, Windows 98, and Windows NT.
Another major add-on to the release of IE4 was Outlook Express,
which would be installed in the default installation and was an
upgrade from the previous Internet Mail and News application.
This was the first offering from Microsoft to compete with
Netscape Communicator in terms of a mail client being installed
with a browser.
This was also a major release for Web programmers since the
introduction of DHTML as a scripting language in IE4, Web pages
could be designed more dynamically. Users could now expand
menus with a click or drag images and objects around on a Web
page. The Web started to look more like the applications and
games that people were accustomed to and less like a static series
of pages.
In September 1998, Internet Explorer 5 was released. DHTML
functionality was improved with more features and with emerging
Web commerce ideas.
Internet Explorer 6 was first released in 2001 with the
release of Windows XP operating system. Later on, IE 6
was released for other Windows flavours. One of the major
improvements in IE6 was the implementation of privacy and
security functionality of the browser. Since privacy and
security had become customer priorities, Microsoft implemented
tools that support Platform for Privacy Preferences (P3P), a
technology under development by the World Wide Web
Consortium (W3C).
Internet Explorer has also been available for the Macintosh for a long time. Although Netscape Navigator was the browser bundled with the Mac OS for a long time, it stopped in 1997 when
Internet Explorer became the default browser for the Mac. But
with the release of Safari browser for the Mac OS, development of
IE for the Mac was stopped.
Today, for any Windows user logging on to the Internet for the
first time, the blue “e” icon sitting on the desktop is the gateway
to the Internet with the default installation of Windows. To use
any other browser, you will need to download or source it from
somewhere and then install it. The little “e” on the other hand is
ubiquitous, and all you need to do is double-click.
So where do we go from here?
IE 7 which was scheduled for release along with Longhorn will
now be released prematurely. Newer browsers such as Firefox
(which we will be talking about soon) will be present, but let’s
face facts, Internet Explorer is here to stay, never mind the antitrust
lawsuits.
