of Internet Explorer 5 rose rapidly between its release in early 1999 to being replaced by IE6 in mid-2001. Graph from 1994 to 2024 for all versions of IE. The actual release of Internet Explorer 5 happened in three stages. First, a Developer Preview was released in June 1998 (5.0B1), and then a Public Preview was released in November 1998 (5.0B2). Then in March 1999 the final release was released (5.0). Version 5.01, a bug fix version, was released in December 1999. Internet Explorer 5 Macintosh Edition had been released a few months earlier on March 27, 2000, and was the final version of Internet Explorer to be released on a MacOS platform. Version 5.5 for Windows was released in June 2000, bundled with 128-bit encryption. It dropped support for several older Windows versions. A 1999 review of IE5 by Paul Thurrott described IE5 in ways such as,
"Think of IE 5.0 as IE 4.0 done right: All of the rough areas have been smoothed out..", "....comes optionally bundled with a full suite of Internet applications that many people are going to find irresistible.", "IE 5.0 is a world-class suite of Internet applications." Microsoft ended all support for Internet Explorer 5.5 SP2, including security updates, on December 31, 2005. Microsoft continued to support Internet Explorer 5.01 SP4, according to its Support Lifecycle Policy; however, this support was ended on July 13, 2010.
Overview (
CDE) Version 5.0, launched on March 18, 1999, and subsequently bundled with
Microsoft Office 2000, was a significant release that supported
bi-directional text,
ruby characters,
XML,
XSLT and the ability to save web pages in
MHTML format. There was enhanced support for CSS Level 1 and 2, and a side bar for web searches was introduced, allowing quick jumps throughout results. However, Internet Explorer 5 incorrectly includes the padding and borders within a specified width or height; this results in a narrower or shorter rendering of a box.
The bug was fixed in
Internet Explorer 6 when running in standards-compliant mode. With the release of Internet Explorer 5.0, Microsoft released the first version of
XMLHttpRequest (XHR), giving birth to
Ajax (even though the term "Ajax" was not coined until years later.) XMLHttpRequest is an
API that can be used by
JavaScript, and other
Web browser scripting languages to transfer
XML and other text data between a page's
client side and
server side, and was available since the introduction of Internet Explorer 5.0 and is accessible via JScript, VBScript and other scripting languages supported by IE browsers.
Windows Script Host was also installed with IE5, although later on viruses and malware would attempt to use this ability as an exploit, which resulted pressure to disable it for security reasons.
Smart Offline Favorites feature was added to the
Active Desktop component introduced in IE4. An "
HTML Application" (HTA) is a
Microsoft Windows application written with
HTML and
Dynamic HTML and introduced with IE5. Internet Explorer 5.0 also introduced
favicon support and
Windows Script Host, which provides scripting capabilities comparable to
batch files, but with a greater range of supported features. Because of
United States v. Microsoft Corp., The
Active Channels Channel Bar was removed in Internet Explorer 5. Version 5.5 followed in June 2000. First released to developers at the 2000
Professional Developers Conference in
Orlando, Florida, then made available for download; it focused on improved print preview capabilities, CSS and HTML standards support, and developer APIs. It also includes support for 128-bit encryption. Although it is no longer available for download from Microsoft directly, it can also be installed with MSN Explorer 6.0 as msnsetup_full.exe. The full version of MSN Explorer can be downloaded only if Internet Explorer 5.5 has not yet been installed. The full version will work but a user will need to download it on earlier Windows versions and transfer the setup file to the newer operating system. If a user still want to download it on a newer operating system, the only way is to use an outdated web browser such as Netscape 4.8. Although newer browsers have been released, IE5 rendering mode continues to have an impact, as a 2008 Ars Technica article notes: :IE5.5 (and below) was decidedly nonstandard in its rendering behavior. Hundreds of millions of web pages were written to look "right" in IE5.5's broken rendering. The result was something of a quandary for Microsoft when it came to release IE6. They wanted to improve the standards conformance in IE6, but could not afford to break pages dependent on the older behavior. :The solution was the "doctype switch". The doctype switch allowed IE6 to support both the old IE5.5 behavior—"quirks mode"—and new, more standards-conforming behavior—"standards mode."
United States v. Microsoft Corp. On April 3, 2000, Judge Jackson issued his
findings of fact that Microsoft had abused its monopoly position by attempting to "dissuade Netscape from developing
Navigator as a platform", that it "withheld crucial technical information", and attempted to reduce Navigator's usage share by "giving Internet Explorer away and rewarding firms that helped build its
usage share" and "excluding Navigator from important distribution channels". Jackson also released a
remedy that suggested Microsoft should be broken up into two companies. This remedy was overturned on appeal, amidst charges that Jackson had revealed a bias against Microsoft in communication with reporters. The findings of fact that Microsoft had broken the law, however, were upheld. The
Department of Justice announced on September 6, 2001 that it was no longer seeking to break up Microsoft and would instead seek a lesser antitrust penalty. Several months later the Department of Justice agreed on a settlement agreement with Microsoft. ==Major features==