Internet Explorer 3.0 was released free of charge on the August 13, 1996. Microsoft thus made no direct revenues on IE and was liable to pay Spyglass only the minimum quarterly fee. In 1997, Spyglass threatened Microsoft with a contractual audit, in response to which Microsoft settled for $8 million U.S. Version 3 included Internet Mail and News 1.0 and the Windows Address Book. It brought the browser much closer to the bar that had been set by
Netscape, including the support of Netscape's
plugins technology (
NPAPI),
ActiveX,
frames, and a
reverse-engineered version of
JavaScript named
JScript. Later,
Microsoft NetMeeting and
Windows Media Player were integrated into the product and thus
helper applications became not as necessary as they once were. CSS were introduced with version 3 of Internet Explorer. The user interface notably changes, with much larger buttons, with more intricate icons, and with a light gray design behind it. Unlike later IE versions, users who upgraded to IE3 could still use the last IE by converting the previous version to a separate directory. Quick Links toolbar, VRML. Microsoft announced on July 29, 1996 that it would develop a native version of IE for "Solaris and other popular variants of UNIX" to be available "by the end of 1996" which would have "equivalent functionality as that provided in Microsoft Internet Explorer 3.0", thus "delivering on its commitment to provide full-featured Web browser support on all major operating system platforms" as well as "supporting and promoting open standards, including
HTML,
ActiveX and
Java". In March, 1997 following a dispute which "arose between Microsoft and Bristol concerning each other's performance of the 1996 IE Agreement" Microsoft reversed course and decided to directly port the Windows version in-house using the MainWin XDE (eXtended Development Environment) application from
Mainsoft, the main competitor to Bristol Technology. (Microsoft would later use MainWin to port
Windows Media Player and
Outlook Express to Unix.) Now well behind schedule, the 3.0 branch was apparently scrapped in favor of 4.0 (that was released for Windows half a year earlier), which used the new
MSHTML (Trident) rendering engine. An
Internet Explorer 4 Beta for
Solaris was released by the end of 1997, leading to
Internet Explorer for UNIX versions, which lasted until
Internet Explorer 5. Backwards compatibility was handled by allowing Users who upgraded to IE3 to still use the last IE, because the installation converted the previous version to a separate directory. Microsoft patched the vulnerability the following day; After this, IE users needed to upgrade to
Authenticode 2.0 which required at least IE 3.02. Authenticode is a
code signing technology.
Internet Explorer version 3.0 for Macintosh Internet Explorer 3 for Macintosh was released on January 8, 1997 for PPC, and added support for the
SSL and
NTLM security protocols and the PICS and
RSACi rating systems that can be used to control access to websites based on content ratings. On November 5, 1996 Microsoft announced the release of a beta version for Mac of Internet Explorer version 3.0. This release added support for
HTML version 3.2, CSS,
Java applets and ActiveX controls. Keith Mitchell of Macworld noted in November 1996, when discussing the IE mac version,
"With the near-simultaneous release of Netscape Navigator 3.0 (415/528-2555, http://www.netscape.com) and Microsoft Internet Explorer 3.0 (206/882-8080, http://www.microsoft.com), both companies are tripping over each other to entice Web users to their products." A problem with an operating system extension used in the Mac OS called CFM68K Runtime Enabler, led to a delay in the release of the version 3.0 for Macs based on the 68k line of processors. Four months later on May 14, Microsoft released version 3.01 which included a version for 68k-based machines. This version included features from the Windows version of Internet Explorer 4.0 such as
AutoComplete and Monitoring Favorites that notified users when sites in their Favorites list have been updated. It included support for JavaScript and introduced a Download Manager and a
Cookie Manager. The download manager was introduced in version 3.01; version 3.0 would open the download progress bar in the main browser window, forcing the user to either cancel the download and restart it in a new window, or wait for the transfer to complete. MacUser's review noted
"While Netscape Navigator 3.0 is more feature-laden and consequently bigger and slower than previous incarnations, Microsoft Internet Explorer has been refined and optimised into a Web browser that has almost as many features, but is both smaller and faster than its rival." ==Bundled software==