Microsoft Internet Explorer 3

Microsoft Internet Explorer 3 (Internet Explorer 3.0) is a graphical web browser released on August 13, 1996 by Microsoft for Microsoft Windows and on January 8, 1997 for Apple Mac OS (see IE for Mac). It kicked off serious competition against Netscape Navigator in the first Browser war. In September 1997 it was superseded by Microsoft Internet Explorer 4. It was the first more widely used version of Internet Explorer, although it did not surpass Netscape or become the browser with the most market share. During its tenure, IE market share went from roughly 3-9% in early 1996 to 20-30% by the end of 1997. Internet Explorer 3 was the first major browser with CSS support. It also introduced support for ActiveX controls, Java applets, inline multimedia, and the Platform for Internet Content Selection (PICS) system for content metadata. Version 3 also came bundled with Internet Mail and News, NetMeeting, and an early version of the Windows Address Book, and was itself included with Windows 95 OSR 2. There were 16-bit and 32-bit versions depending on the OS. IE3 was the first version developed without Spyglass source code, but still used Spyglass technology, so the Spyglass licensing information remained in the program's documentation. In 1996 Microsoft said of its new browser "Microsoft® Internet Explorer 3.0 adds many new features which are great for HTML authors and demonstrates our accelerating commitment to W3C HTML standards. "

Internet Explorer 3.0 was released free of charge in August 1996 by bundling it with Windows 95 OSR2, another OEM release. 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 also 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. Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) were also introduced with version 3 of Internet Explorer. While IE1 and IE2 were said have "paled" in comparison to Netscape, IE3 "delivers a crushing blow to Netscape". The user interface notably changes, with much larger buttons, with more intricate icons, and with a light grey design behind it . Unlike later IE versions, users who upgraded to IE3, could still use the last IE by converting the previous version to separate directory. It also could import favorites into IE3 from IE1 or 2. The competition between Netscape and Microsoft heated up, with some saying the Internet community had "became polarized on the issue of which web browser had the most features" Other new features included Jscript, ActiveMovie multimedia API, HTML Layout Control, Quick Links toolbar, VRML, CSS 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" and likely also because of contract negotiations with Bristol to access Windows source code after September 1997 failing, 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 also 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 Trident rendering engine. A 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.

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Internet Explorer 2

Internet Explorer- General Information

Source-en.wikipedia.org

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Internet Explorer 2

Microsoft Internet Explorer 2 (Internet Explorer 2.0) was a graphical web browser released in November 1995 by Microsoft for Microsoft Windows(3.1/NT/95) and in April 1996 for Apple Macintosh. Version 2.0 featured support for SSL, cookies, VRML, and Internet newsgroups.

Version 2.0 was also released for the Macintosh and Windows 3.1 in April 1996. Version 2 was also included in Microsoft's Internet Starter Kit for Windows 95 in early 1996, which retailed for 19.99 USD and included how-to book and 30 days of internet accesses on MSN among other features. In addition to being sold in the starter kit, Internet Explorer 2 was the first be included in OSR versions of Windows, was bundled with Windows 95 OSR 1. There were 16-bit and 32-bit versions depending on the OS. Version 2.1 came out for Macintosh in August 1996, the same month 2 was superseded by Microsoft Internet Explorer 3 for Windows, which was heavily changed from 1 and 2. It launched with twelve languages including English but this expanded to 24, 20, and 9 for Win 95, Win 3.1 and Mac respectively by April 1996. The 2.0i version supported double-byte character-set. Version 2 lacked many features that became common in later IE versions, including the Blue 'e' logo, shell integration, bundled programs, difficult uninstall, and having significant market share. During its tenure, IE market share only went up to about roughly 3-9% by mid 1996, before IE3 came out.

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Internet Explorer- General Information

Source- en.wikipedia.org

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Internet Explorer- General Information

Windows Internet Explorer (formerly Microsoft Internet Explorer abbreviated MSIE), commonly abbreviated to IE, is a series of graphical web browsers developed by Microsoft and included as part of the Microsoft Windows line of operating systems starting in 1995. It has been the most widely used web browser since 1999, attaining a peak of about 95% usage share during 2002 and 2003 with IE5 and 6 but steadily declining since, despite the introduction of IE7. Microsoft spent over a 100 million dollars (USD) a year in the late 1990s, with over 1000 people working on IE by 1999.

Internet Explorer was first released as part of the add-on package Plus! for Windows 95. Later versions are available as free downloads and are also included in the OEM service releases of Windows 95 and in later versions of Windows. The most recent release is version 7.0, which is available as a free update for Windows XP with Service Pack 2, and Windows Server 2003 with Service Pack 1 or later, and is included with Windows Vista. An embedded OEM version called Internet Explorer for Windows CE (IE CE) is also available for WinCE based platforms and is currently based on IE6. Another Windows CE/ Windows Mobile browser known as Internet Explorer Mobile is from a different code base and should not be confused with desktop versions of the browser.

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Early browsers

AMosaic

AMosaic is an Amiga port of the Mosaic web browser. It was the first non-*NIX port of Mosaic, and the first graphical web browser made available for the Amiga. AMosaic was based on NCSA's Mosaic, but was not distributed by the University of Illinois or NCSA. The last version of AMosaic was a 2.0 prerelease.

As is the case for other versions of Mosaic worldwide, AMosaic is no longer updated or supported. It has, however, been ported to the AmigaOS source compatible AROS operating system. The developers of AMosaic went on to develop IBrowse, which is still in active development today.

Cello

Cello was an early web browser and Gopher client for Windows 3.1. It was developed by Thomas R. Bruce of the Legal Information Institute at Cornell Law School, and publicly released on June 8, 1993. The last edition was version 1.01a, released on April 9, 1994.

Cello was created because lawyers used Microsoft Windows on their computers, but web browsers available at the time were mostly for Unix operating systems. This meant many legal experts were unable to access legal information made available in hypertext on the world wide web.

Cyberdog

Cyberdog is an internet suite that was developed by Apple Computer for the Mac OS line of operating systems. It was introduced as a beta in February 1996 and abandoned in March 1997. It worked with later versions of Mac OS 7 as well as the Mac OS 8 and Mac OS 9 operating systems.

Grail

Grail was a free extensible multi-platform web browser written in the Python programming language. Its last release was of version 0.6 in 1999 and has been unmaintained since then.

One of the major distinguishing features of Grail was the ability to run client-side Python code, in much the same way as mainstream browsers run client-side JavaScript code.

MacWeb

MacWeb was an early Mac OS-only web browser for 68k and PowerPC Apple Macintosh computers, developed by TradeWave (formerly EINet) between 1994 and 1996. MacWeb's major attraction was its ability to run well on low-end hardware, with small memory (1 MB or less) and disk (680 kB, small enough to fit on a floppy disk) footprints as well as fast (but simple) page display. TradeWave also developed a similar Microsoft Windows browser named WinWeb. However, they were eclipsed by more full-featured competitors such as Netscape Navigator, and development was eventually abandoned.

The first public release was 0.98-alpha on May 31, 1994, and the final official release was version 2.0 in 1996. An unofficial "2.0c" patch was released by Antoine Hébert in 1998 to correct a problem on old machines not supporting color QuickDraw.

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Free web browsers

These are the web browsers which can be freely used, copied, studied, modified, and redistributed by everyone that obtains a copy: "free software" or "open source software". Typically, this means software which is distributed with a free software license, and whose source code is available to anyone who receives a copy of the software.

ABACO WEB BROWSER

Abaco is a web browser for the Plan 9 operating system. It is a graphical web browser with support for inline images, tables and frames. It has a true multiple document interface inspired on acme's interface. It is a multi-threaded and modest-sized program

AMAYA WEB BROWSER

Amaya is a free and open source web browser and authorng tool created by a structured editor project at Institut National de Recherche en Informatique et en Automatique (INRIA), a French national research institution, and later adopted by World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), the main international standards organization for the World Wide Web.

ARACHNE WEB BROWSER

Arachne is a full-screen Internet suite containing a graphical web browser, email client, and dialer. It primarily runs on DOS based operating systems, but includes a few preliminary builds for Linux. Arachne was originally created by Michael Polak (under the label xChaos software, later renamed to Arachne Labs) in the C language and compiled using Borland C++ 3.1 compiler, but since been released under the GPL as Arachne GPL.

ARENA WEB BROWSER

Arena is a web browser developed by the W3C for testing support for HTML 3 and Cascading Style Sheets.

The W3C halted work on the Arena browser, and switched to the Amaya browser as their new testbed. On 17 February 1997, Yggdrasil Computing took over the role of developing the browser. Development seems to have stopped in late 1998, with the final release being on 25 November.

Despite its time of development, Arena is in certain areas a relatively modern browser; because it functioned as a testbed, it saw the implementation of new technologies long before they became mainstream, i.e. CSS.

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WEB BROWSERS RATING

Safari 3.0.4

Increasingly, Web browsers have become the conduit through which we interact with the world around us. It’s not just about reading Web pages any more—browsers now act as multi-functional tools for watching video, listening to audio, and chatting with our friends. Because of these greater demands, browsers are not only becoming more sophisticated but also more complex.

In this increasingly demanding atmosphere, Apple’s Safari 3.0.4 strikes an excellent balance between the need for increased functionality and the need to add new functions.

The best browsers support the current Web standards for HTML, CSS, and JavaScript (the technologies that make Web pages), so that pages load consistently regardless of your chosen technology. Apple constantly releases Safari updates so that the browser always has the latest features, including some cutting-edge Web standards that haven’t been officially released.

Safari already displays the toughest Web pages like greased lightening. Add to that its intuitive interface, with tabs and an easy-to-use bookmarking system, as well as seamless integration with OS X’s built-in Address Book so that URLs stored in address cards are in an easy to use drop-down menu. Subscribers to the $100-a-year .Mac service enjoy even more functionality, thanks to a feature that lets them keep bookmarks in sync among multiple computers.

Safari keeps its interface clean and lean so that you can focus on the Web page.

Safari 3 adds to this solid foundation by refining existing features and adding new functionality that enhances how you use the Web. Refinements include the browser’s new inline searching, which highlights all matching search terms as you type, and new PDF controls, which allow you to display and control this popular document format directly in the browser window without having to open a new application.

Safari’s most striking new feature is Web Clip, an OS X 10.5-only addition. Web Clip allows you to select part of a Web page and instantly turn it into a Dashboard widget. For example, let’s say your favorite organization has a news headline section on its homepage. With Web Clip, all you have to do is “clip” the news box from that Web page by clicking the Web Clip button next to Safari’s address field, selecting the relevant section, and clicking on the Add button. Whenever you want to check headlines, all you have to do is switch to Dashboard to see your clipping. This may well be the future of how we interact with the Web.

One common complaint I hear about Safari is that the browser lacks customization beyond basic adjustments such as security, fonts, and which buttons show up in the Toolbar. Unlike Firefox and many other browsers, Safari does not allow users to use third-party add-ons to increase functionality or change the interface appearance, nor does it allow you to specify the default search engine in the toolbar, so you are stuck with Google.

These are fair complaints. Still, browsers that offer more add-ons and customization are also prone to crashing and interface clutter. Safari’s approach seems a fair trade off for simplicity and reliability.

Source- macworld.com/article/132311/2008/03/safari3

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