It seems difficult to believe that this week, Microsoft Internet Explorer celebrates its fifteenth birthday. The Internet browser, launched in summer 1995, is now in its eighth version. Shortly after the initial version was released, its ties to Windows caused it to gobble up a whopping 95 percent market share.
Though Netscape Navigator fell victim, a new competitor arose in 2004 in the form of the open-source Mozilla Firefox. The PC and mobile Internet browser playing field now includes names like Safari, Chrome, and Opera. Through all of this, Internet Explorer has managed to retain its number one spot, currently holding more than 60 percent of the combined market share.
Internet Explorer 1, built by only five or six programmers, was based on the Mosaic browser from Spyglass Inc. and was under 1 MB. Version two included a beta version for Macs and support for cookies and HTML tables. The recognizable logo surfaced with version three, as did support of cascading style sheets, JPEG and GIF images, MIDI audio file playing ability, and an email client called Internet Mail & News, predecessor to Outlook Express.
In 1997, version four was released with more features and bundled with Windows 98. Microsoft started the browser wars by painting its logo on the front lawn of Netscape headquarters. After the release of the fifth version, which contained new favorite, search, and history features, the browser occupied 50 percent market share. Version six, released in August 2001, with its pop up blocker and other great new features, was so successful that Internet Explorer held 90 percent of the market. However, poor security features tarnished its reputation, and continue to do so.
Version seven was not released until six years later and in the meantime, Mozilla released its Firefox browser. Internet Explorer 7 included many features of Firefox and the browser got a new name, Windows Internet Explorer. Tabbed browsing, page zooming, RSS support, and a separate search bar were included with both the 32 and 64-bit versions. In March 2009, the current version was released as the default browser for PCs and mobile Internet laptops running Windows 7. It features a private browsing feature that makes history difficult to discover. It also has a feature called Accelerators, which provides access to additional online information regarding highlighted text. Version nine will enter beta phase next month and is expected to include more support for Web standards.
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