Microsoft released it on 27th August 2001 and was shipped with Windows XP and Windows Server 2003.
It was the most widely used web browser till then. Internet Explorer 6 had all the stuff with image toolbar, auto image resize, print preview and Media bar (as shown in the below screenshot). Unique version with Windows Whistler (XP) beta. Minor changes to support of frames.įinal release. Last version supported on Windows 3.x and Windows NT 3.x.īug fix release. Support of bi-directional text, ruby character, XML/XSL and more CSS properties.įinal release. Here is the complete version details of Internet Explorer 5 (Referenced from Wikipedia): Major version Here is a snapshot of the IE5 GUI, for your reference: IE5 includes a better GUI with support to HTA and Active Desktop too. IE5 supports bi-directional text, ruby chars, XML, XSLT, MHTML, CSS Level 1&2. It was bundled with Windows 98 Second Edition and Office 2000. Internet Explorer 5 was launched on 18th March 1999 targeting mainly for Windows with support to Mac and Solaris. It was the new era of e-commerce with its expanded programming capabilities. Improved support of CSS and Microsoft DOM. Here is the complete version information of Internet Explorer 4 (Referred Wikipedia): Major version Other new features include Dynamic HTML, PNG images and parental rating system.
Active Desktop made a revolution by displaying internet content on the desktop and update the content automatically. Internet Explorer 4 had a support of Active Desktop, Channels, Net Meeting, Microsoft Chat and Outlook Express 4. It was bundled with Windows 95 OSR2 and Windows 98. At that time, it came with support of Solaris OS too. Have a look:Īnother revolution came when Internet Explorer 4 was launched in September 1997 by Microsoft. IE3 supports a better GUI for browsing the web than the previous releases. It became a popular web browser in the first week of it's release for it's greater support to the web.
IE3 offered internet mail, news 1.0 with graphics and music. It was a bundled web browser with Windows 95 OS release 2. Internet Explorer v3 was the revolution to GUI based web browser and was launched in 13th August 1996 for Windows OS and on 8th January 1997 for Mac OS. It had support to HTML 3 including tables, frames, background sound, text-font etc. IE2 had support for JavaScript, cookies, SSL protocol, VRML, integrated email and news client with SMTP & POP support. Have a look into the GUI of Internet Explorer 2 here: It supported 12 languages in the initial time frame and later it was increased to 24.
In April 1996, it was released for Mac OS too. Internet Explorer v2 was the first cross-platform browser that supports both Windows and Mac OS, which released on 22nd November 1995 for Windows 95 and NT OS. Here is a screenshot of the Internet Explorer v1: It supports text based rendering and no support of playing musics, videos and images. It was the first GUI web browser available that time having ~1MB size. It was installed as part of Internet Jumpstart Kit of Microsoft Plus. Internet Explorer v1 was launched in 16th August 1995 with Microsoft Plus! for Windows 95. With that code, Microsoft launched it's first browser called "Internet Explorer" in 1995 with Microsoft Plus! for Windows 95.
Later in 1994, SpyGlass licensed the source code of Mosaic to Microsoft and then Microsoft started developing their new browser with the code of SpyGlass Mosaic. It was first developed in 1987 and eventually licensed to a company named SpyGlass. If we go a little back to originator, we will know that it was originally named as "Mosaic", the first web browser to use in GUI mode. Though we know the product as "Microsoft Internet Explorer", but it was not originally from Microsoft. In this post, we will discuss about that. Let us start discussing on the History of Internet Explorer, how it came into market, various versions of it and features. In this post, we will discuss about the history of Internet Explorer which will include various Internet Explorer versions and their features. Internet Explorer 9 has lots of new features and enhancements which will give you much faster and secure web experience.
Currently it is in Release Candidate and if you want to try it out, can download the RC version from net. Microsoft is going to release Internet Explorer 9 RTM on Monday, 14th March 2011.