With the release of Internet Explorer’s first beta upon is, it’s a good time to look back upon the history of Microsoft’s web browser. As it turns out, Internet Explorer turns 15 today, with the first version released August 16, 1995. Pretty turbulent history, there.
I’m relatively young, so my internet experience started with good old Netscape, which still exists to this day as a heavily morphed and altered version of itself – Firefox. Internet Explorer was Microsoft’s answer to Netscape’s success and the growing popularity of the internet.
However, the browser wasn’t written from scratch; in true Microsoft fashion, the company licensed the codebase for Spyglass’ Mosaic, and built Internet Explorer from that. The funny part is that in some way, Internet Explorer and Netscape (and thus, Firefox) are relatively close relatives; Marc Andreessen, who founded Netscape, was a Mosaic developer.
Rivalry ensued, leading to rapid development paces on both the IE and Netscape ends; back then, Microsoft wasn’t a follower when it came to web browsers – they were setting standards, too. IE 3.0 was the first to include support for CSS, and IE5 introduced XMLHttpRequest, the basis for Ajax. In the meantime, Netscape blessed the web with things like the blink and marquee tags. Remember that around this time, Microsoft released Comic Sans, so let’s call it karmatically even.
For the release of Internet Explorer 4.0, Microsoft had created a giant 3 metre high version of the “e” logo, which was dropped off in front of Netscape’s headquarters overnight with a sign that read “From the IE team … We Love You”. Netscape tipped the logo over, and and placed a giant version of its dinosaur logo on top of it, with a sign that read “Netscape 72, Microsoft 18” – in reference to the market share figures of the time.
The laughing would soon stop over at Netscape. Microsoft’s Internet Explorer became the better browser, and was distributed for free from the get-go. On top of that, it became part of Windows itself, which pretty much stopped people from downloading anything else. IE became the dominant browser, with at one point a market share of 96%.
Without any competition to speak of, development came to a halt, and it would take Firefox – it used to be called Phoenix – rising from Netscape’s ashes to kick IE’s butt into shape. Microsoft is getting there – and the browser wars have returned.
And we, customers, benefit from it all.
Marquee was an Internet Explorer invention and nothing to do with Netscape ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marquee_element )
Also, Comic Sans was released for Microsoft’s answer to IRC: Microsoft Comic Chat ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Comic_Chat ) In fact, the font ‘Comic Sans’ is actually the most endearing part of Microsoft’s IRC client – which gives you an idea just how woeful Comic chat was.
I never trust information from WikiPedia.org because they are not a 100% reputable source of valid or correct information.
There are many other sources of good information on the ‘Net.
No encyclopaedia is 100% accurate, however on this occasion wikipedia is correct.
In fact I only included a wikipedia link because people sometimes complain when you don’t provide evidence. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.
Okay. Mod me down for a personal preference based on my experiences with WikiPedia.
Here’s a good article to read about a college barring references from WikiPedia and their reasoning:
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2007/01/26/wiki
The moderation system on here doesn’t allow for people who have already commented to cast moderation on other comments within that thread.
So in short, I couldn’t have modded you if I wanted to (which personally I didn’t).
To be honest, I don’t really care. I’ve been there, done that, got my qualifications and have since been working in IT for a number of years (In fact, when I was college Wikipedia didn’t even exist, so I’m fully versed in academic publications). So I have no reason what-so-ever to prove my point and nor will I waste my time finding a source that has been approved by top Universities.
The Wikipedia link was just a 30 second job, posted incase people wanted further reading. The knowledge I posted was from my own personal experience. I’ve got no need to provide a reference but I chose to because I thought some people might be grateful for it. Little did I realise the futilely of such efforts in the face of nitpickers like yourself.
So in the future, I’ll be sure to leave out the links for further reading and let you do your own fraking Googling.
Sorry if this sounds harsh, but I really don’t see why it should matter when the subject in question was 1 sodding HTML tag that isn’t even used any more.
You seem to have taken extreme offense when none was ever intended.
Internet Explorer 4 was good. I’m not old enough to have been there when the browser was just getting on its feet, but I remember Netscape 2, then IE3 and remember the wow of IE4. Microsoft went on overdrive to make certain Netscape was done in. They added frames, scripting, DHTML, CSS–everything. In the end they didn’t need to; a combination of bundling IE and Netscape failing to update Netscape 4.7 until Netscape 6 several years later sealed Netscape’s doom.
In a way, we have benefited from the IE monopoly in one way. I’ve learnt web development during a time where it was easier than it is now. There was only one browser to test in, and the browser didn’t change for over five years, meaning we all had lots of time to focus on polishing our skills, than keeping up with a constantly moving platform. It must be very hard getting into web design right now because it’s an absolutely confusing array of incompleteness.
IE6 did what IE6 did and that’s all you had to worry about.
IE9 has shown a demonstratable change in Microsoft’s behaviour with IE. They finally seem to be ‘getting’ the web and working hard at not only implementing the standards, but fighting to nail down the unclear parts of them and ensure that their implementation is the best and fastest. They finally have some pride in their product.
I believe that HTML5 is the next C++. It’s messy, clunky, you can shoot yourself in the foot easily with it, but it’s the common language by which most apps [will] get written.
Edited 2010-08-16 14:36 UTC
Frames existed before IE4. I remember using frames on both IE3 and Netscape Navigator 3 (maybe before then, but I can’t recall that far back). In fact, I remember being wound up at IE4 upon release as it broke all of my frames!
[edit]
Yes, frames were around before IE4, but the standard changed (or the implimentation was only then standardised by w3c) with HTML4 (which was IE4 supported):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Framing_(World_Wide_Web)#History
That’s only true if you learned web development in the early 00s.
If you was building sites before then, then it was a complete nightmare. Browsers were not only incompatible with each other, they were incompatible with different versions of themselves!
Interesting analogy. Thanks for sharing
Edited 2010-08-16 14:50 UTC
Thanks for the correction. IE4 did add a lot of stuff, I probably thought Frames were new in IE4 because of the scripting capability where I first used them. I wonder if IE3 had iframes?
I was really fortunate and started in 2000/1, when you could just about ignore that Netscape existed and get away with it unscathed.
IIRC iframes came a little latter and was original another Internet Explorer specific tab.
I can’t recall exactly what release first saw iframes, but it was either IE4 or IE5
Ah-HAH! So you’re the reason I had problems with webpages in Netscape back then!
Never used IE. I road the sinking Netscape ship until Mozilla came around. Still don’t use it, but seeing MS actually doing something instead of sitting around twiddling their thumbs is nice.
Blame the system! http://camendesign.com/quote/web-cowboy
Microsoft did invent the <iframe> tag, and it was introduced in IE4.
The main with netscape compared with internet explorer concerning webdesign was measurement, internet explorer could do pixel perfect adjustment where netscape had some weird ~8 pixel snap (for frame anyway, curse them as much as you could they were a bandwidth saver).
internet explorer was way more web designer friendly at that time, more tolerant to error, and “fast” javascript.
these time were easier, right now it is all about SEO,
and less about the actual content
Pretty soon IE will want a drivers license but I can’t afford to insure another teenager. Once I get NCSA Mosaic a job and out of the house, maybe then.
At least he’s working to get a job now, after those five years at home with depression after the tragic death (after a long coma) of his younger intensely rival brother Netscape, and now being spurred on by his bitter jealously of the massive success of his immensely popular sister Firefox.
Families. You can’t live without them, you can’t live with them.
..i was just cursing the fact that i now have to support 5 crap browsers instead of just the one..
Hurray for 15 terrible years! And here’s a toast to Microsoft for another 15!
HAPPY BIRTHDAY DEBIAN!!!
http://www.debian.org/
…and thoroughly enjoyed Mosaic.
From Mosaic I became more familiar with Netscape, but used IE from time to time. It was frustrating when web sites only worked well with IE and I was either on my uVAX or my OS/2, Redhat or BeOS machine.
But gotta give some credit to MS and IE for pushing the boundaries a little. Too bad they grew complacent.
Still looking forward to the BETA in September.
I remember getting my own computer (486) in 1995. It came with 3.1, so I borrowed someones stack of 100 disk
Win95. Signed up for Internet and the disk came with Netscape. In ’96 Microsoft came out with that big ass download of the IE suite and it took all night. Enjoyed toying with it, but never really left Netscape. I simply segued directly into Mozilla suite and then into Firefox. Got on Firefox around 1.0. Could never get my head around why people would give up their rights to vendor lock in. Plus no matter how much better IE might have been, it still cared more about the web site than users. For example the right click context menu. Still can’t figure out why Firefox has the disable right click enabled by default.
I must not understand what you are trying to say here. It sounds like you think firefox doesn’t have bring up the context menu on right click by default. This is not and has never has been my experience with firefox, firebird, or pheonix on any operating system.
Please forgive me, I didn’t word it properly. What I was trying to say was that many web browsers including Firefox allow scripts to replace or disable context menus. In IE I was never able to find an option to turn off the ability of scripts to manipulate the context menus. In Firefox I have the ability to stop scripts from messing around with the context menu’s. This of course can manifest itself as right or left click or keyboard etc. I hope I am more clear now. Sorry for the murky post.
Ok, I understand. Although, I’ve only recently found sites that do that for firefox. I didn’t know it had an option to prevent that. But I don’t usually browse sites that would do it. Usually its a photographer’s website that a relative of mine wants pictures from, but the context menu that would allow them to save the pictures is disabled. So I usually just wget the page & pictures manually. Nice to know firefox is a bit friendlier.
and written on it “Thanks for keeping a truly crap browser alive for this many years”
Yes, I should too.
To gave me so much work…
So many workaround developed.
So many calls & emails receive by lost users.
So many strange bugs from versions to versions.
IE is _*THE*_ reason why I changed jobs… And got a better life !
;-))
Edited 2010-08-17 09:47 UTC