IE replicated many of the quirks of
Netscape Navigator, and allowed importing bookmarks from it. In May 1996,
FTP Software announced it was providing Microsoft with various technology for
Internet Explorer 2.0, including a PPP network, 16-bit email client, and other technology.
Availability Internet Explorer version 2 was released in beta in October 1995, only 2 months after version 1 came out in
Microsoft Plus! for ‘95 that August. It was released for Microsoft Windows in November 1995. The Beta for Mac on
PowerPC came out in January, and the finalized version in April for
68k and PowerPC. The Mac version was not released until January 1996 for PPC, and April for 68k. There were
16-bit and
32-bit versions depending on the OS.
Mac version The Mac version, especially version 2.1, was praised for being economic with resources and for new features. Internet Explorer supported the embedding of a number of multimedia formats into web pages, including
AVI and
QuickTime formatted video and
AIFF,
MIDI and
WAV formatted audio. The non-beta final version was released three months later on April 23, 1996. Version 2.1 fixed bugs and improving stability, but also added a few features such as support for the
NPAPI (the first version of Internet Explorer on any platform to do so) and support for
QuickTime VR.
AOL 3.0 for Macintosh used the IE 2.1 rendering engine in its built-in web browser. The various 16 and 32 bit versions largely depended on the OS although NT-based systems would use the 16 bit versions. ==Features==