Microsoft Internet Explorer 1 Microsoft Internet Explorer 1 made its debut on August 24, 1995. It was a reworked version of
Spyglass Mosaic which Microsoft had licensed, It was installed as part of the
Internet Jumpstart Kit in Plus! for Windows 95. The Internet Explorer team began with about six people in early development. Version 1.5 was released in fall 1995 for
Windows NT and added support for basic
HTML table rendering. By including it free of charge on their
operating system, they did not have to pay royalties to Spyglass Inc, resulting in a lawsuit and a
US$8 million settlement on January 22, 1997. Although not included, this software can also be installed on the original release of Windows 95. Internet Explorer 1 is no longer supported, or available for download from Microsoft. However, archived versions of the software can be found on various websites. Support for Internet Explorer 1 ended on December 31, 2001, the same day as older Windows Versions.
Features Internet Explorer came with an install routine replacing a manual installation required by many of the existing web browsers.
Microsoft Internet Explorer 2 Microsoft Internet Explorer 2 was released on November 27, 1995 (following a beta in October). It featured support for JavaScript, SSL, cookies, frames,
VRML,
RSA, and
Internet newsgroups. Version 2 was also the first release for
Windows 3.1 and
Macintosh System 7.0.1 (PPC or 68k), although the Mac version was not released until January 1996 for PPC, and April for 68k. Version 2.1 for the Mac came out in August 1996, although by this time, Windows was getting version 3. Version 2 was included in Windows 95 OSR1, Windows NT 4.0 and Microsoft's
Internet Starter Kit. It launched with twelve languages, including English, but by April 1996, this was expanded to 24, 20, and 9 for Windows, and Mac, respectively. The first major IE security hole, the Princeton Word Macro Virus Loophole, was discovered on August 22, 1996, in IE3. Backwards compatibility was handled by allowing users who upgraded to IE3 to still use the previous version, because the installation renamed the old version (incorporating the old version number) and stored it in the same directory. It is the last version of Internet Explorer to run on Windows NT 3.5 and Windows NT 4.0 RTM—SP2.
Microsoft Internet Explorer 4 Microsoft Internet Explorer 4, released on September 22, 1997, deepened the level of integration between the web browser and the underlying operating system. Installing version 4 on Windows 95 or Windows NT 4.0 and choosing
Desktop Update would result in the traditional File Explorer being replaced by a version more akin to a web browser interface, as well as the Windows desktop itself being web-enabled via
Active Desktop. The integration with Windows, however, was subject to numerous packaging criticisms (see
United States v. Microsoft). This option was no longer available with the installers for later versions of Internet Explorer, but was not removed from the system if already installed. It introduced support for
Group Policy, allowing companies to configure and lock down many aspects of the browser's configuration as well as support for offline browsing. Internet Mail and News was replaced with
Outlook Express, and
Microsoft Chat and an improved NetMeeting were also included. This version was also included with Windows 95 OSR 2.5 and
Windows 98. New features that allowed users to save and retrieve posts in comment forms were added, but they are not used today. Internet Explorer 4.5 offered new features such as easier 128-bit encryption. It also offered a dramatic stability improvement over prior versions, particularly the
68k version, which was especially prone to freezing.
Microsoft Internet Explorer 5 Microsoft Internet Explorer 5 was released on March 18, 1999, and subsequently included with
Windows 98 SE and bundled with
Office 2000, was another significant release that supported
bi-directional text,
ruby characters,
XML,
XSLT, and the ability to save web pages in
MHTML format. IE5 was bundled with
Outlook Express 5. Also, with the release of IE5, Microsoft released the first version of
XMLHttpRequest, giving birth to
Ajax (even though the term "Ajax" was not coined until years later). It was the last with a 16-bit version. Version 5.01, a bug fix version included in
Windows 2000, was released in November 1999 and is the last version of Internet Explorer to run on
Windows 3.1 and
Windows NT 3.51. Internet Explorer 5.5 followed in June 2000, improving its print preview capabilities, CSS and HTML standards support, and developer APIs; this version was included with
Windows ME. However, version 5 was the last version for
Mac and
UNIX. Version 5.5 was the last to have
Compatibility Mode, which allowed
Internet Explorer 4 to be run side by side with the 5.x series. The IE team consisted of over 1,000 people by 1999, with funding on the order of per year. The
MSXML engine was also updated to version 3. Other new features included a new version of the
Internet Explorer Administration Kit (IEAK), Media bar,
Messenger integration, fault collection, automatic image resizing,
P3P, and a new look-and-feel that was in line with the
Luna visual style. Internet Explorer 6 SP1, which offered several security enhancements, was released on August 30, 2002 and it is the last version of Internet Explorer to run on
Windows NT 4.0 SP6a,
Windows 98,
Windows 2000 and
Windows Me, although it is only available as included in Windows XP RTM—SP1 and Windows Server 2003 RTM. In 2002, the
Gopher protocol was disabled, and support for it was dropped in Internet Explorer 7. Internet Explorer 6 SV1 came out on August 6, 2004 for
Windows XP SP2 and offered various security enhancements and new colour buttons on the user interface. Internet Explorer 6 updated the original 'blue e' logo to a lighter blue and more
3D look. Microsoft has launched a website, https://web.archive.org/web/20110304205645/http://ie6countdown.com/, with the goal of getting Internet Explorer 6 usage to drop below 1 percent worldwide. Its usage is 6% globally as of October 2012, and now about 6.3% since June 2013, and depending on the country, the usage differs heavily: while the usage in Norway is 0.1%, it is 21.3% in the People's Republic of China. On January 3, 2012, Microsoft announced that usage of IE6 in the United States had dropped below 1%.
Windows Internet Explorer 7 Windows Internet Explorer 7 was released on October 18, 2006, and subsequently included with
Windows Vista and
Windows Server 2008. It includes bug fixes, enhancements to its support for web standards,
tabbed browsing with tab preview and management, a multiple-engine search box, a web feeds reader,
Internationalized Domain Name support (IDN),
Extended Validation Certificate support, and an anti-phishing filter. With IE7, Internet Explorer has been decoupled from the Windows Shell—unlike previous versions, the Internet Explorer
ActiveX control is not hosted in the File Explorer process, but rather runs in a separate Internet Explorer process. It is the last version of Internet Explorer to run on
Windows XP x64 Edition RTM and
Windows Server 2003 SP1. The original release of Internet Explorer 7 required the computer to pass a
Windows Genuine Advantage validation check prior to installing, but on October 5, 2007,
Microsoft removed this requirement. As some statistics show, by mid-2008, Internet Explorer 7 market share exceeded that of Internet Explorer 6 in a number of regions.
Windows Internet Explorer 8 Windows Internet Explorer 8 was released on March 19, 2009, and subsequently included with
Windows 7 and
Windows Server 2008 R2. It is the first version of IE to pass the
Acid2 test, and the last of the major browsers to do so (in the later
Acid3 Test, it only scores 24/100.). According to Microsoft, security, ease of use, and improvements in
RSS,
CSS, and
Ajax support were its priorities for IE8. It is the last version of Internet Explorer to run on
Windows XP SP2+,
Windows XP x64 Edition SP2,
Windows Server 2003 SP2,
Windows Vista RTM—SP1 and
Windows Server 2008 RTM. Support for Internet Explorer 8 is bound to the lifecycle of the Windows version it is installed on as it is considered an OS component, thus it is unsupported on Windows XP due to the
end of extended support for the latter in April 2014. Effective January 12, 2016, Internet Explorer 8 is no longer supported on any client or server version of Windows, due to new policies specifying that only the newest version of IE available for a supported version of Windows will be supported. However several
Windows Embedded versions will remain supported until their respective
EOL, unless otherwise specified.
Windows Internet Explorer 9 Windows Internet Explorer 9 was released on March 14, 2011. Development for Internet Explorer 9 began shortly after the release of Internet Explorer 8. Microsoft first announced Internet Explorer 9 at
PDC 2009, and spoke mainly about how it takes advantage of hardware acceleration in
DirectX to improve the performance of
web applications and quality of
web typography. At
MIX 10, Microsoft showed and publicly released the first Platform Preview for Internet Explorer 9, a frame for IE9's engine not containing any UI of the browser. Leading up to the release of the final browser, Microsoft released updated platform previews, each featuring improved
JavaScript compiling (32-bit version), improved scores on the
Acid3 test, as well as additional
HTML5 standards support, approximately every six weeks. Ultimately, eight platform previews were released. The first public beta was released at a special event in San Francisco, which was themed around "the beauty of the web". The release candidate was released on February 10, 2011, and featured improved performance, refinements to the UI, and further standards support. The final version was released during the
South by Southwest (SXSW) Interactive conference in Austin, Texas, on March 14, 2011. It supports several
CSS 3 properties (including border-radius, box-shadow, etc.), and embedded
ICC v2 or v4
colour profiles support via
Windows Color System. The 32-bit version has faster
JavaScript performance, this being due to a new JavaScript engine called "Chakra". It also features
hardware accelerated graphics rendering using
Direct2D, hardware-accelerated text rendering using
DirectWrite, hardware-accelerated video rendering using
Media Foundation, imaging support provided by
Windows Imaging Component, and high fidelity printing powered by the
XPS print pipeline. IE9 also supports the
HTML video and
audio tags and the
Web Open Font Format. Internet Explorer 9 initially scored 95/100 on the Acid3 test, but has scored 100/100 since the test was updated in September 2011. Internet Explorer was to be omitted from Windows in Europe, but Microsoft ultimately included it, with a browser option screen allowing users to select any of several web browsers (including Internet Explorer). Internet Explorer is now available on
Xbox 360 with
Kinect support, as of October 2012, although this version is extremely limited today.
Internet Explorer 10 Internet Explorer 10 was released on September 4, 2012, and subsequently included with
Windows 8 and
Windows Server 2012. It became available for
Windows 7 SP1 and
Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 on February 26, 2013. Microsoft announced Internet Explorer 10 in April 2011, at
MIX 11 in Las Vegas, releasing the first Platform Preview at the same time. At the show, it was said that
Internet Explorer 10 was about three weeks in development. This release further improves upon standards support, including HTML5 Drag & Drop and CSS3 gradients. Internet Explorer 10 Release Preview was also released on the Windows 8 Release Preview platform.
Internet Explorer 11 Internet Explorer 11 is featured in a
Windows 8.1 update which was released on October 17, 2013. It includes an incomplete mechanism for syncing tabs. It features a major update to its
developer tools, enhanced scaling for high DPI screens,
HTML5 prerender and prefetch,
hardware-accelerated JPEG decoding,
closed captioning, HTML5 full screen, and is the first Internet Explorer to support
WebGL and Google's protocol
SPDY (starting at v3). This version of IE has features dedicated to Windows 8.1, including cryptography (WebCrypto), and
Encrypted Media Extensions. Internet Explorer 11's
user agent string now identifies the agent as "
Trident" (the underlying browser engine) instead of "MSIE". It also announces compatibility with
Gecko (the browser engine of
Firefox). Microsoft claimed that Internet Explorer 11, running the WebKit SunSpider JavaScript Benchmark, was the fastest browser as of October 15, 2013. Since January 12, 2016, only the most recent version of Internet Explorer offered for installation on any given Windows operating system is supported with security updates, lasting until the end of the support lifecycle for that Windows operating system. On Windows 7 and 8.1, only Internet Explorer 11 received security updates until the end of those Windows versions' support lifecycles. Support for Internet Explorer 11 is bound to the lifecycle of the Windows version it is installed on as it is considered an OS component, thus it is unsupported on Windows 7 due to the
end of extended support on January 14, 2020. Internet Explorer 11 was made available for
Windows Server 2012 and
Windows Embedded 8 Standard, the only still supported edition of
Windows 8 in April 2019. It is the only supported version of Internet Explorer on these operating systems since January 31, 2020. Internet Explorer 11 follows the OS component lifecycle, which means it remains supported with technical and security fixes as long as the operating system including it as a component remains supported. This means that Internet Explorer 11 support will end on January 13, 2032, along with the end of Windows 10 IoT Enterprise LTSC 2021 support, barring any changes to the support policy. On August 17, 2020, Microsoft published a timeline indicating that the
Microsoft Teams product would stop supporting Internet Explorer 11 on November 30, 2020, and
Microsoft 365 products ended support for Internet Explorer 11 on August 17, 2021. In May 2021, Microsoft announced that support for Internet Explorer 11 on editions of Windows 10 that are not in the
Long-Term Servicing Channel (LTSC) would end on June 15, 2022. Internet Explorer 11 was thought to not be on
Windows 11, Windows Server Insider Build 22463 and Windows Server Insider Build 25110 as a separate application - however, a few people managed to access it, through the question mark in the Internet Options window. However, while the browser itself is no longer supported, it is supported as IE mode in
Edge, including on Windows 11, Windows Server Insider Build 22463 and Windows Server Insider Build 25110. Microsoft has said that it will maintain support for this feature until 2029 at the earliest, and that it will provide one year's notice before its discontinuation. IE mode uses the
Trident MSHTML engine. ==Release history for desktop Windows OS version==