Internet Explorer (abbreviated as MSIE or IE) is a series of graphical browsers developed by Microsoft that have been part of the Windows operating systems since 1995. It was first released as part of the optional Plus! for Windows 95. Later versions were available for free download, released simultaneously with the operating system.
The MSIE browser is one of the most widely used applications, reaching its peak of popularity during 2002 and 2003. Its distribution declined slightly with the launch of Safari (2003), Firefox (2004) and Google Chrome (2008), each of which began to occupy a significant market share.
Since the first release of the application, Microsoft has continued to introduce additional features and technologies. One of them is XMLHttpRequest (MSIE 5 and above), which facilitates the creation of dynamic web pages, as well as support for multilingual domain names (in the seventh version), which allows you to browse sites with a name of non-Latin characters.
The latest widely used release, Internet Explorer 10, features a new interface that allows the browser to be used both in a desktop environment and on touchscreen devices.
Various versions of MSIE for other operating systems have also been released, including for the Xbox. Support for IE for Mac and UNIX (Solaris and HP-UX) has been dropped.
Internet Explorer was designed to surf a wide variety of web pages and provide certain features to the operating system, including downloading updates from Microsoft. In a time of intense application competition, Explorer replaced Netscape as soon as it could technologically support changing requirements.
In addition to the basic functions it performs, the MSIE browser has introduced its own extensions for many standards, including HTML, CSS and DOM. The reason was the appearance of a number of web pages that do not meet generally accepted standards. In order to open them, a compatibility mode was developed.
Thus, the MSIE browser introduced a number of extensions to the DOM that were used in other programs. These include Innerhtml (provides access to an HTML string in an element), XMLHttpRequest (allows you to send an HTTP request and receive an appropriate response), and DesignMode (provides rich text editing capabilities in HTML documents).
Other non-standard extensions include support for vertical text and various graphic effects, use of JScript. Encode and CRV fonts in web pages.
In addition, MSIE browser has its own plug-in - favicon (from the English abbreviation "favorite image"), which is now supported in other applications. Its essence is that the web pagecan have its own 16 x 16 pixel image used in bookmarks. Initially, only the ICO format was supported, but other types of graphic files are now common, including-p.webp" />
The MSIE browser uses the standards provided by Windows by default. The application also has a user interface for FTP, visually very similar to Windows Explorer. Starting with the sixth version, pop-up blocking and tab support have been added to the functionality. In addition, you can add tab mode to previous distributions of the program by installing the appropriate update.
