Internet Explorer[a] (formerlyMicrosoft Internet Explorer[b] andWindows Internet Explorer,[c] commonly abbreviated asIE orMSIE) is aretired series ofgraphicalweb browsers developed byMicrosoft that were used in theWindows line ofoperating systems. While IE has been discontinued on most Windows editions, it remains supported on certain editions of Windows, such asWindows 10 LTSB/LTSC.[4] Starting in 1995, it was first released as part of the add-on packagePlus! for Windows 95 that year. Later versions were available as free downloads or in-service packs and included in theoriginal equipment manufacturer (OEM) service releases of Windows 95 and later versions of Windows. Microsoft spent overUS$100 million per year on Internet Explorer in the late 1990s,[5] with over 1,000 people involved in the project by 1999.[6][7] In 2016,Microsoft Edge was released to succeed Internet Explorer 11 as Microsoft's primary web browser. New feature development for Internet Explorer was discontinued that same year,[8] and support for the browser officially ended on June 15, 2022, for Windows 10 Semi-Annual Channel (SAC) editions.
Internet Explorer was once the most widely used web browser, attaining a peak of 95%usage share by 2003.[9] It has since fallen out of general use after retirement. This came after Microsoft usedbundling to win thefirst browser war againstNetscape, which was the dominant browser in the 1990s. Its usage share has since declined with the launches ofFirefox (2004) andGoogle Chrome (2008) and with the growing popularity of mobile operating systems such asAndroid andiOS that do not support Internet Explorer. Microsoft Edge, IE's successor, first overtook Internet Explorer in terms of market share in November 2019. Versions of Internet Explorer for other operating systems have also been produced, including anXbox 360 version called Internet Explorer for Xbox and for platforms Microsoft no longer supports:Internet Explorer for Mac andInternet Explorer for UNIX (Solaris andHP-UX), and an embedded OEM version called Pocket Internet Explorer, later rebrandedInternet Explorer Mobile, made forWindows CE,Windows Phone, and, previously, based on Internet Explorer 7, forWindows Phone 7.
The browser has been scrutinized throughout its development for its use of third-party technology (such as thesource code ofSpyglass Mosaic, used without royalty in early versions) and security and privacyvulnerabilities, andthe United States andthe European Union have determined that the integration of Internet Explorer with Windows has been to the detriment of fair browser competition.
The core of Internet Explorer 11 will continue being shipped and supported until at least 2029 asIE Mode, a feature ofMicrosoft Edge, enabling Edge to display web pages using Internet Explorer 11'sTrident layout engine and other components.[10] Through IE Mode, the underlying technology of Internet Explorer 11 partially exists on versions of Windows that do not support IE11 as a proper application, including newer versions ofWindows 10, as well asWindows 11 21H2-25H2,Windows Server 2022 andWindows Server 2025.[11]
The Internet Explorer project was started in the summer of 1994 byThomas Reardon,[12] who, according to former project lead Ben Slivka,[13] used source code fromSpyglass, Inc. Mosaic, which was an early commercial web browser with formal ties to the pioneeringNational Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA)Mosaic browser.[14][15] In late 1994,Microsoft licensed Spyglass Mosaic for a quarterly fee plus a percentage of Microsoft's non-Windows revenues for the software.[15] Although bearing a name similar to NCSA Mosaic, Spyglass Mosaic had used the NCSA Mosaic source code sparingly.[16]
The first version, dubbed Microsoft Internet Explorer, was installed as part of theInternet Jumpstart Kit in theMicrosoft Plus! pack forWindows 95.[17] The Internet Explorer team began with about six people in early development.[16][18] Internet Explorer 1.5 was released several months later forWindows NT and added support for basic table rendering. By including it free of charge with theiroperating system, they did not have to pay royalties to Spyglass Inc, resulting in a lawsuit and aUS$8 million settlement on January 22, 1997.[14][15]
Microsoft was sued by SyNet Inc. in 1996, fortrademark infringement, claiming it owned the rights to the name "Internet Explorer".[19] It ended with Microsoft paying $5 million to settle the lawsuit.[20]
Internet Explorer 3 is the third major version of Internet Explorer, released on August 13, 1996, for Microsoft Windows and on January 8, 1997, for Apple Mac OS.[23]
Internet Explorer 4 is the fourth major version of Internet Explorer, released in September 1997 for Microsoft Windows, Mac OS,Solaris, andHP-UX. It was the first version of Internet Explorer to use theTrident web engine.
Internet Explorer 6 is the sixth major version of Internet Explorer, released on August 24, 2001, for Windows NT 4.0 SP6a, Windows 98,Windows 2000,Windows ME and as the default web browser forWindows XP andWindows Server 2003.
Internet Explorer 8 is the eighth major version of Internet Explorer, released on March 19, 2009, for Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008 and as the default web browser forWindows 7 (later default was Internet Explorer 11) and Windows Server 2008 R2.
Internet Explorer 9 is the ninth major version of Internet Explorer, released on March 14, 2011, for Windows 7,Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Vista Service Pack 2 and Windows Server 2008 SP2 with thePlatform Update.
Internet Explorer 10 is the tenth major version of Internet Explorer, released on October 26, 2012, and is the default web browser forWindows 8 andWindows Server 2012. It became available forWindows 7 SP1 andWindows Server 2008 R2 SP1 in February 2013.
Internet Explorer 11 was made available forWindows 7 users to download on November 7, 2013, withAutomatic Updates in the following weeks.[35]
Internet Explorer 11'suser agent string now identifies the agent as "Trident" (the underlying browser engine) instead of "MSIE". It also announces compatibility withGecko (the browser engine ofFirefox).
Microsoft claimed that Internet Explorer 11, running theWebKit SunSpiderJavaScript Benchmark, was the fastest browser as of October 15, 2013.[36]
Microsoft Edge [Legacy] was officially unveiled on January 21, 2015, as "Project Spartan".[38][39] On April 29, 2015, Microsoft announced that Microsoft Edge would replace Internet Explorer as the default browser in Windows 10.[40] However, Internet Explorer remained the default web browser on the Windows 10 Long Term Servicing Channel (LTSC) and on Windows Server until 2021, primarily for enterprise purposes.[41][42][43][44]
Internet Explorer is still installed in Windows 10 to maintain compatibility with older websites andintranet sites that requireActiveX and other legacy web technologies.[38][39] The browser's MSHTML rendering engine also remains for compatibility reasons.
Additionally,Microsoft Edge (Chromium) shipped with the "Internet Explorer mode" feature, which enables support for legacy internet applications. This is possible through use of theTrident MSHTML engine, therendering code of Internet Explorer.[45][46] Microsoft has committed to supporting Internet Explorer mode at least through 2029, with a one-year notice before it is discontinued.[47]
With the release of Microsoft Edge [Legacy], the development of new features for Internet Explorer ceased.Internet Explorer 11 was the final release, and Microsoft began the process of deprecating Internet Explorer. During this process, it will still bemaintained as part of Microsoft's support policies.[8]
Since January 12, 2016, only the latest version of Internet Explorer available for each version of Windows has been supported.[48][49] At the time, nearly half of Internet Explorer users were using an unsupported version.[50]
In February 2019, Microsoft Chief of Security Chris Jackson recommended that users stop using Internet Explorer as their default browser.[51]
Various websites have dropped support for Internet Explorer. On June 1, 2020, theInternet Archive removed Internet Explorer from its list of supported browsers, due to the browser's dated nature.[52] Since November 30, 2020, the web version ofMicrosoft Teams can no longer be accessed using Internet Explorer 11, followed by the remainingMicrosoft 365 applications since August 17, 2021.[53][54] WordPress also dropped support for the browser in July 2021.[55]
On June 15, 2022, Internet Explorer 11 support ended for theWindows 10 Semi-Annual Channel (SAC). Users on these versions of Windows 10 were redirected toMicrosoft Edge starting on February 14, 2023, and visual references to the browser (such as icons on the taskbar) would have been removed on June 13, 2023. However, on May 19, 2023, various organizations disapproved, leading Microsoft to withdraw the change.[58][59]Other versions of Windows that were still supported at the time were unaffected. Specifically,Windows 7 ESU,Windows 8.x,Windows RT;Windows Server 2008/R2 ESU,Windows Server 2012/R2 and later; andWindows 10 LTSB/LTSC continued to receive updates until their respective end of life dates.[60][61][62][63]
On other versions of Windows, Internet Explorer will still be supported until their own end of support dates.IE7 was supported until October 10, 2023, alongside the end of support forWindows Embedded Compact 2013, whileIE9 is supported until January 13, 2026, alongside the end of [paid andgrandfathered] Premium Assurance support for customers onWindows Server 2008.[49] Barring additional changes to the support policy, Internet Explorer 11 will be supported until January 13, 2032, concurrent with the end of support for Windows 10 IoT Enterprise LTSC 2021.[64][49]
Page zoom as seen inIE11. The lowest allowed manual zoom level is 10%, and the highest 1000%.[65]
Internet Explorer has been designed to view a broad range of web pages and provide certain features within the operating system, includingMicrosoft Update. During the height of thebrowser wars, Internet Explorer supersededNetscape only when it caught up technologically to support the progressive features of the time.[66][better source needed]
Internet Explorer, using the MSHTML (Trident)browser engine:
SupportsHTML 4.01, parts ofHTML5,CSS Level 1, Level 2, and Level 3,XML 1.0, andDOM Level 1, with minor implementation gaps.
Fully supportsXSLT 1.0 as well as an obsolete Microsoft dialect of XSLT often referred to asWD-xsl, which was loosely based on the December 1998 W3C Working Draft ofXSL. Support forXSLT 2.0 lies in the future: semi-official Microsoft bloggers have indicated that development is underway, but no dates have been announced.
Almost full conformance to CSS 2.1 has been added in the Internet Explorer 8 release.[67][68] The MSHTML browser engine in Internet Explorer 9 in 2011, scored highest in the official W3C conformance test suite for CSS 2.1 of all major browsers.
SupportsXHTML in Internet Explorer 9 (MSHTML Trident version 5.0). Prior versions can render XHTML documents authored with HTML compatibility principles and served with atext/htmlMIME-type.
Supports a subset[69] ofSVG in Internet Explorer 9 (MSHTML Trident version 5.0), excluding SMIL, SVG fonts and filters.
Internet Explorer usesDOCTYPE sniffing to choose between standards mode and a "quirks mode" in which it deliberately mimics nonstandard behaviors of old versions of MSIE for HTML and CSS rendering on screen (Internet Explorer always uses standards mode for printing). It also provides its own dialect ofECMAScript calledJScript.
Internet Explorer was criticized byTim Berners-Lee for its limited support for SVG, which is promoted byW3C.[70]
Internet Explorer has introduced an array of proprietary extensions to many of the standards, including HTML, CSS, and the DOM. This has resulted in several web pages that appear broken in standards-compliant web browsers and has introduced the need for a "quirks mode" to allow for rendering improper elements meant for Internet Explorer in these other browsers.
Internet Explorer has introduced several extensions to the DOM that have been adopted by other browsers.
These include the inner HTML property, which provides access to the HTML string within an element, which was part of IE 5 and was standardized as part of HTML 5 roughly 15 years later after all other browsers implemented it for compatibility,[71] the XMLHttpRequest object, which allows the sending of HTTP request and receiving of HTTP response, and may be used to performAJAX, and the designMode attribute of the content Document object, which enables rich text editing of HTML documents.[citation needed] Some of these functionalities were not possible until the introduction of the W3C DOM methods. ItsRuby character extension to HTML is also accepted as a module in W3C XHTML 1.1, though it is not found in all versions of W3C HTML.
Microsoft submitted several other features of IE for consideration by the W3C for standardization. These include the 'behavior' CSS property, which connects the HTML elements with JScript behaviors (known as HTML Components, HTC),HTML+TIME profile, which adds timing and media synchronization support to HTML documents (similar to the W3CXHTML+SMIL), and theVMLvector graphics file format. However, all were rejected, at least in their original forms; VML was subsequently combined withPGML (proposed byAdobe andSun), resulting in the W3C-approved SVG format, one of the few vector image formats being used on the web, which IE did not support until version 9.[72]
Other non-standard behaviors include: support for vertical text, but in a syntax different from W3C CSS3 candidate recommendation, support for a variety of image effects[73] and page transitions, which are not found in W3C CSS, support forobfuscated script code, in particularJScript.Encode,[74] as well as support forembeddingEOT fonts inweb pages.[75]
Support forfavicons was first added in Internet Explorer 5.[76] Internet Explorer supports favicons inPNG, staticGIF andnative Windows icon formats. In Windows Vista and later, Internet Explorer can display native Windows icons that have embedded PNG files.[77][78]
Internet Explorer makes use of the accessibility framework provided in Windows. Internet Explorer is also a user interface for FTP, with operations similar to Windows Explorer. Internet Explorer 5 and 6 had a side bar for web searches, enabling jumps through pages from results listed in the side bar.[79]Pop-up blocking andtabbed browsing were added respectively in Internet Explorer 6 and Internet Explorer 7. Tabbed browsing can also be added to older versions by installingMSN Search Toolbar orYahoo Toolbar.
Internet Explorer caches visited content in theTemporary Internet Files folder to allow quicker access (or offline access) to previously visited pages. The content is indexed in a database file, known asIndex.dat. Multiple Index.dat files exist which index different content—visited content,web feeds, visitedURLs, cookies, etc.[80]
Prior to IE7, clearing the cache used to clear the index but the files themselves were not reliably removed, posing a potential security and privacy risk. In IE7 and later, when the cache is cleared, the cache files are more reliably removed, and the index.dat file is overwritten with null bytes.
Internet Explorer is fully configurable usingGroup Policy. Administrators ofWindows Server domains (for domain-joined computers) or the local computer can apply and enforce a variety of settings on computers that affect the user interface (such as disabling menu items and individual configuration options), as well as underlying security features such as downloading of files, zone configuration, per-site settings, ActiveX control behavior and others. Policy settings can be configured for each user and for each machine. Internet Explorer also supportsIntegrated Windows Authentication.
The architecture of IE8. Previous versions had a similar architecture, except that both tabs and the UI were within the same process. Consequently, each browser window could have only one "tab process".
Internet Explorer uses acomponentized architecture built on theComponent Object Model (COM) technology. It consists of several major components, each of which is contained in a separatedynamic-link library (DLL) and exposes a set of COMprogramming interfaces hosted by the Internet Explorer main executable,iexplore.exe:[82]
WinInet.dll is the protocol handler forHTTP,HTTPS, andFTP. It handles all network communication over these protocols.
URLMon.dll is responsible for MIME-type handling and download of web content, and provides a thread-safe wrapper around WinInet.dll and other protocol implementations.
MSHTML.dll houses theMSHTML (Trident)browser engine introduced in Internet Explorer 4, which is responsible for displaying the pages on-screen and handling theDocument Object Model (DOM) of the web pages. MSHTML.dll parses the HTML/CSS file and creates the internal DOM tree representation of it. It also exposes a set ofAPIs for runtime inspection and modification of the DOM tree. The DOM tree is further processed by a browser engine which then renders the internal representation on screen.
IEFrame.dll contains the user interface and window of IE in Internet Explorer 7 and above.
ShDocVw.dll provides the navigation, local caching and history functionalities for the browser.
BrowseUI.dll is responsible for rendering the browser user interface such as menus and toolbars.[83]
Internet Explorer compared toFirefox on theAcid3 HTML rendering test
Internet Explorer does not include any native scripting functionality. Rather,MSHTML.dll exposes an API that permits a programmer to develop a scripting environment to be plugged-in and to access the DOM tree. Internet Explorer 8 includes the bindings for theActive Scripting engine, which is a part ofMicrosoft Windows and allows any language implemented as an Active Scripting module to be used for client-side scripting. By default, only the JScript andVBScript modules are provided; third party implementations likeScreamingMonkey (for ECMAScript 4 support) can also be used. Microsoft also makes available theMicrosoft Silverlight runtime that allowsCLI languages, includingDLR-based dynamic languages likeIronPython andIronRuby, to be used for client-side scripting.
Internet Explorer 8 introduced some major architectural changes, calledloosely coupled IE (LCIE). LCIE separates the main window process (frame process) from the processes hosting the different web applications in different tabs (tab processes). A frame process can create multiple tab processes, each of which can be of a differentintegrity level, each tab process can host multiple web sites. The processes use asynchronousinter-process communication to synchronize themselves. Generally, there will be a single frame process for all web sites. InWindows Vista with protected mode turned on, however, opening privileged content (such as local HTML pages) will create a new tab process as it will not be constrained by protected mode.[84]
Internet Explorer exposes a set of Component Object Model (COM) interfaces that allowsadd-ons to extend the functionality of the browser.[82] Extensibility is divided into two types: Browser extensibility and content extensibility. Browser extensibility involves addingcontext menu entries, toolbars, menu items orBrowser Helper Objects (BHO). BHOs are used to extend the feature set of the browser, whereas the other extensibility options are used to expose that feature in the user interface. Content extensibility adds support for non-native content formats.[82] It allows Internet Explorer to handle newfile formats and newprotocols, e.g.WebM or SPDY.[82] In addition, web pages can integratewidgets known as ActiveX controls which run on Windows only but have vast potentials to extend the content capabilities;Adobe Flash Player and Microsoft Silverlight are examples.[82] Add-ons can be installed either locally, or directly by a web site.
Since malicious add-ons can compromise the security of a system, Internet Explorer implements several safeguards. Internet Explorer 6 with Service Pack 2 and later feature an Add-on Manager for enabling or disabling individual add-ons, complemented by a "No Add-Ons" mode.Starting with Windows Vista, Internet Explorer and its BHOs run with restrictedprivileges and are isolated from the rest of the system. Internet Explorer 9 introduced a new component – Add-on Performance Advisor. Add-on Performance Advisor shows a notification when one or more of installed add-ons exceed a pre-set performance threshold. The notification appears in the Notification Bar when the user launches the browser. Windows 8 and Windows RT introduce aMetro-style version of Internet Explorer that is entirely sandboxed and does not run add-ons at all.[85] In addition, Windows RT cannot download or install ActiveX controls at all; although existing ones bundled with Windows RT still run in the traditional version of Internet Explorer.[85]
Internet Explorer itself can be hosted by other applications via a set of COM interfaces. This can be used to embed the browser functionality inside a computer program or createInternet Explorer shells.[82]
Internet Explorer uses a zone-basedsecurity framework that groups sites based on certain conditions, including whether it is an Internet- or intranet-based site as well as a user-editable whitelist. Security restrictions are applied per zone; all the sites in a zone are subject to the restrictions.
Internet Explorer 6 SP2 onwards uses theAttachment Execution Service of Microsoft Windows to mark executable files downloaded from the Internet as being potentially unsafe. Accessing files marked as such will prompt the user to make an explicit trust decision to execute the file, as executables originating from the Internet can be potentially unsafe. This helps in preventing the accidental installation of malware.
Internet Explorer 7 introduced the phishing filter, which restricts access tophishing sites unless the user overrides the decision. With version 8, it also blocks access to sites known to hostmalware. Downloads are also checked to see if they are known to be malware-infected.
In Windows Vista, Internet Explorer by default runs in what is calledProtected Mode, where the privileges of the browser itself are severely restricted—it cannot make any system-wide changes. One can optionally turn this mode off, but this is not recommended. This also effectively restricts the privileges of any add-ons. As a result, even if the browser or any add-on is compromised, the damage the security breach can cause is limited.
Patches and updates to the browser are released periodically and made available through the Windows Update service, as well as through Automatic Updates. Although security patches continue to be released for a range of platforms, most feature additions and security infrastructure improvements are only made available on operating systems that are in Microsoft's mainstream support phase.
On December 16, 2008,Trend Micro recommended users switch to rival browsers until an emergency patch was released to fix a potential security risk which "could allow outside users to take control of a person's computer and steal their passwords." Microsoft representatives countered this recommendation, claiming that "0.02% of internet sites" were affected by the flaw. A fix for the issue was released the following day with the Security Update for Internet Explorer KB960714, on Microsoft Windows Update.[86][87]
In 2010, Germany's Federal Office for Information Security, known by its German initials, BSI, advised "temporary use of alternative browsers" because of a "critical security hole" in Microsoft's software that could allow hackers to remotely plant and run malicious code on Windows PCs.[88]
In 2011, a report by Accuvant, funded by Google, rated the security (based on sandboxing) of Internet Explorer worse thanGoogle Chrome but better thanMozilla Firefox.[89][90]
A 2017 browser security white paper comparing Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge [Legacy], andInternet Explorer 11 by X41 D-Sec in 2017 came to similar conclusions, also based on sandboxing and support of legacy web technologies.[91]
Internet Explorer has been subjected to many security vulnerabilities and concerns such that the volume of criticism for IE is unusually high. Much of thespyware,adware, andcomputer viruses across the Internet are made possible by exploitable bugs and flaws in the security architecture of Internet Explorer, sometimes requiring nothing more than viewing of a malicious web page to install themselves. This is known as a "drive-by install". There are also attempts to trick the user into installing malicious software by misrepresenting the software's true purpose in the description section of an ActiveX security alert.
A number of security flaws affecting IE originated not in the browser itself, but in ActiveX-based add-ons used by it. Because the add-ons have the same privilege as IE, the flaws can be as critical as browser flaws. This has led to the ActiveX-based architecture being criticized for being fault-prone. By 2005, some experts maintained that the dangers of ActiveX had been overstated and there were safeguards in place.[92] In 2006, new techniques usingautomated testing found more than a hundred vulnerabilities in standard Microsoft ActiveX components.[93] Security features introduced in Internet Explorer 7 mitigated some of these vulnerabilities.
In 2008, Internet Explorer had a number of published security vulnerabilities. According to research done by security research firmSecunia, Microsoft did not respond as quickly as its competitors in fixing security holes and making patches available.[94] The firm also reported 366 vulnerabilities in ActiveX controls, an increase from the previous year.
According to an October 2010 report inThe Register, researcher Chris Evans had detected a known security vulnerability which, then dating back to 2008, had not been fixed for at least six hundred days.[95] Microsoft says that it had known about this vulnerability, but it was of exceptionally low severity as the victim web site must be configured in a peculiar way for this attack to be feasible at all.[96]
In December 2010, researchers were able to bypass the "Protected Mode" feature in Internet Explorer.[97]
In an advisory on January 14, 2010, Microsoft said that attackers targeting Google and other U.S. companies used software that exploits a security hole, which had already been patched, in Internet Explorer. The vulnerability affected Internet Explorer 6 on Windows XP and Server 2003, IE6 SP1 on Windows 2000 SP4, IE7 on Windows Vista, XP, Server 2008, and Server 2003, IE8 on Windows 7, Vista, XP, Server 2003, and Server 2008 (R2).[98]
TheGerman government warned users against using Internet Explorer and recommended switching to an alternative web browser, due to the major security hole described above that wasexploited in Internet Explorer.[99] The Australian and French governments also issued a similar warning a few days later.[100][101][102][103]
On April 26, 2014, Microsoft issued a security advisory relating toCVE-2014-1776 (use-after-free vulnerability in Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 through 11[104]), a vulnerability that could allow "remote code execution" in Internet Explorer versions 6 to 11.[105] On April 28, 2014, the United StatesDepartment of Homeland Security'sUnited States Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT) released an advisory stating that the vulnerability could result in "the complete compromise" of an affected system.[106] US-CERT recommended reviewing Microsoft's suggestions to mitigate an attack or using an alternate browser until the bug is fixed.[107][108] The UK National Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-UK) published an advisory announcing similar concerns and for users to take the additional step of ensuring their antivirus software is up to date.[109]Symantec, a cyber security firm, confirmed that "the vulnerability crashes Internet Explorer on Windows XP."[110] The vulnerability was resolved on May 1, 2014, with a security update.[111]
The adoption rate of Internet Explorer seems to be closely related to that of Microsoft Windows, as it is the default web browser that comes with Windows. Since the integration of Internet Explorer 2.0 with Windows 95 OSR 1 in 1996, and especially after version 4.0's release in 1997, the adoption was greatly accelerated: from below 20% in 1996, to about 40% in 1998, and over 80% in 2000. This made Microsoft the winner in the infamous 'first browser war' against Netscape.Netscape Navigator was the dominant browser during 1995 and until 1997, but rapidly lost share to IE starting in 1998, and eventually slipped behind in 1999. The integration of IE with Windows led to a lawsuit byAOL, Netscape's owner, accusing Microsoft of unfair competition. Theinfamous case was eventually won by AOL but by then it was too late, as Internet Explorer had already become the dominant browser.
Internet Explorer peaked during 2002 and 2003, with about 95% share. Its first notable competitor after beating Netscape was Firefox fromMozilla, which itself was an offshoot from Netscape.
Approximate usage over time based on various usage share counters averaged for the year overall, or for the fourth quarter, or for the last month in the year depending on availability of reference.[112][113][114][115][116][117]
Internet Explorer's market share fell below 50% in September 2010.[118] In May 2012, Google Chrome overtook Internet Explorer as the most used browser worldwide, according toStatCounter.[119]
Browser Helper Objects are also used by manysearch engines companies and third parties for creating add-ons that access their services, such as search engine toolbars. Because of the use of COM, it is possible to embed web-browsing functionality in third-party applications. Hence, there are several Internet Explorer shells, and several content-centric applications likeRealPlayer also use Internet Explorer's web browsing module for viewing web pages within the applications.
While a major upgrade of Internet Explorer can be uninstalled in a traditional way if the user has saved the original application files for installation, the matter of uninstalling the version of the browser that has shipped with an operating system remains a controversial one.
The idea of removing a stock install of Internet Explorer from a Windows system was proposed during theUnited States v. Microsoft Corp. case. One of Microsoft's arguments during the trial was that removing Internet Explorer from Windows may result in system instability. Indeed, programs that depend on libraries installed by IE, including Windows help and support system, fail to function without IE. Before Windows Vista, it was not possible to runWindows Update without IE because the service used ActiveX technology, which no other web browser supports.[120][121]
The popularity of Internet Explorer led to the appearance of malware abusing its name. On January 28, 2011, a fake Internet Explorer browser calling itself "Internet Explorer – Emergency Mode" appeared. It closely resembled the real Internet Explorer but had fewer buttons, no tabs and no search bar. If a user attempted to launch any other browser such as Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox,Opera,Safari, or the real Internet Explorer, this browser would be loaded instead. It also displayed a fake error message, claiming that the computer was infected with malware and Internet Explorer had entered "Emergency Mode". It blocked access to legitimate sites such as Google if the user tried to access them.[122][123]
^Paul Maritz."U.S. Antitrust Case 98-1232". justice.gov. RetrievedFebruary 6, 2015.There is talk about how we get more $'s from the 1000+ people we have working on browser related stuff...
^ab"Frequently Asked Questions".Microsoft Edge Development.Microsoft. Archived fromthe original on July 16, 2016.The latest features and platform updates will only be available in Microsoft Edge. We will continue to deliver security updates to Internet Explorer 11 through its supported lifespan. To ensure consistent behavior across Windows versions, we will evaluate Internet Explorer 11 bugs for servicing on a case by case basis.
^Warren, Tom (August 3, 2022)."You can bring Internet Explorer back to life in Windows 11 if you're a glutton for punishment".theverge.com. Vox Media, LLC. RetrievedOctober 22, 2022.It's just a matter of searching for Internet Options in the Start menu, launching the control panel applet, selecting the programs tab, hitting "manage add-ons," and then clicking the "Learn more about toolbars and extensions." For some reason, this launches Internet Explorer, bypassing the commands that force you into Edge.
^"How to set the zoom level in Internet Explorer 9 – Browsers".Microsoft Docs. April 21, 2020. Archived fromthe original on October 30, 2020. RetrievedNovember 19, 2025.Internet Explorer Zoom lets you make the screen display larger or smaller so that a webpage is easier to read. Unlike changing the font size, zoom enlarges or reduces everything on the page, including text and images. You can zoom from 10% to 1,000%.
^Wilson, Brian (1999)."Browser History: Netscape".Blooberry.com.Archived from the original on August 31, 2025. RetrievedSeptember 26, 2010.By the fourth generations of both browsers, Internet Explorer had caught up technologically with Netscape's browser. As time went on, Netscape's market share diminished from its once-towering percentages. ... Even with the tantalizing promise for authors of finally having a wide-distribution browser that completely adheres to the official language standards for HTML, CSS, DOM and ECMAScript, the market-share that Netscape once held has mostly evaporated (by many accounts its market share is now down below 20%.) Its initial release of Netscape 6.0 was considered slow and buggy, and adoption was slow to occur. Now that Mozilla has finally reached what it considers to be a significant milestone in its development process (1.0 – which Netscape 7.0 is based on), perhaps those market share usage numbers will increase again...certainly the latest releases are very stable, much faster and support an ever-growing variety of standards and features.
^Wingfield, Nick; McGroarty, Patrick (January 19, 2010). "Business Technology: Microsoft's Internet Explorer Is Under Fire in Europe".The Wall Street Journal.
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