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The Internet Explorer project was started in the summer of 1994 by Thomas Reardon, using source code from Spyglass, Inc. Mosaic, an early commercial web browser with formal ties to the pioneering NCSA Mosaic browser. In late 1994, Microsoft licensed Spyglass Mosaic for a quarterly fee plus a percentage of Microsoft’s non-Windows revenues for the software. Although bearing a name similar to NCSA Mosaic,
Spyglass Mosaic had used the NCSA Mosaic source code sparingly.

Internet Explorer 1

The first version of Internet Explorer (later referred to as Internet Explorer 1) made its debut on August 16, 1995. It was a reworked version of Spyglass Mosaic, which Microsoft had licensed, like many other companies initiating browser development, from Spyglass Inc.
It came with Microsoft Plus! for Windows 95 and the OEM release of Windows 95. It was installed as part of the Internet Jumpstart Kit
in Plus!. The Internet Explorer team began with about six people in early
development. Internet Explorer 1.5 was released several months later for Windows NT
and added support for basic table rendering. By including it free of
charge on their OS they did not have to pay royalties to Spyglass Inc.,
which resulted in a lawsuit and a multi-million USD settlement.

Internet Explorer 2

Internet Explorer 2 was released for Windows 95, Windows NT 3.5, and NT 4.0 on November 22, 1995 (following a 2.0 beta in October). It featured support for SSL, cookies, VRML, RSA, and Internet newsgroups. Version 2 was also the first release for Windows 3.1 and Macintosh System 7.0.1 (PPC or 68k), although the Mac version was not released until January 1996 for PPC, and April for 68k.
Version 2.1 for the Mac came out in August 1996, although by this time,
Windows was getting 3.0. Version 2 was included in Windows 95 OSR 1 and
Microsoft’s Internet Starter Kit for Windows 95 in early 1996. 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.

Internet Explorer 3

Internet Explorer 3 was released on August 13, 1996, and went
on to be much more popular than its predecessors. Internet Explorer 3
was the first major browser with CSS support, although this support was only partial. It also introduced support for ActiveX controls, Java applets, inline multimedia, and the 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. Version 3 proved to be
the first more popular version of Internet Explorer, which brought with
it increased scrutiny. In the months following its release, a number of
security and privacy vulnerabilities were found by researchers and
hackers. This version of Internet Explorer was the first to have the
‘blue e’ logo. The Internet Explorer team consisted of roughly 100 people during the development of three months.
The first major IE security hole, the Princeton Word Macro Virus Loophole, was
discovered on August 22, 1996 in IE3. 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.

Internet Explorer 4

Internet Explorer 4, released in September 1997, deepened the
level of integration between the web browser and the underlying
operating system. Installing version 4 on a Windows 95 or Windows NT 4
machine and choosing Windows Desktop Update
would result in the traditional Windows Explorer being replaced by a
version more akin to a web browser interface, as well as the Windows
desktop itself being web-enabled via Active Desktop. The integration with Windows, however, was subject to numerous packaging criticisms (see United States v. Microsoft).
This option was no longer available with the installers for later
versions of Internet Explorer but was not removed from the system if
already installed. Internet Explorer 4 introduced support for Group Policy,
allowing companies to configure and lock down many aspects of the browser’s
configuration as well as support for offline browsing. Internet Mail and News was replaced with Outlook Express, and Microsoft Chat and an improved NetMeeting were also included. This version also was included with Windows 98.
New features were added that allow users to save and retrieve posts in
comment forms, which are still not being used today. Internet Explorer
4.5 offered new features such as easier 128-bit encryption. It also
offered a dramatic stability improvement over prior versions,
particularly the 68k version which was especially prone to freezing.

Internet Explorer 5

Internet Explorer 5, launched on March 18, 1999, and subsequently included with Windows 98 Second Edition and bundled with Office 2000, was another significant release that supported bi-directional text, ruby characters, XML, XSLT, and the ability to save web pages in MHTML format. IE5 was bundled with Outlook Express 5. Also, with the release of Internet Explorer 5.0, Microsoft released the first version of XMLHttpRequest, giving birth to Ajax
(even though the term “Ajax” was not coined until years later). It was
the last with a 16-bit version. Internet Explorer 5.01, a bug fix
version, was released in December 1999. Windows 2000
includes this version. Internet Explorer 5.5 followed in July 2000,
improving its print preview capabilities, CSS and HTML standards
support, and developer APIs; this version was bundled with Windows Me. However, version 5 was the last version for Mac and UNIX. Version 5.5 was the last to have Compatibility Mode, which allowed
Internet Explorer 4 to be run side by side with the 5.x. The IE team consisted of over 1,000 people by 1999, with funding on the order of 100 million USD
per year.

Internet Explorer 6

Internet Explorer 6 was released on August 27, 2001, a few months before Windows XP. This version included DHTML enhancements, content restricted inline frames, and partial support of CSS level 1, DOM level 1, and SMIL
2.0. The MSXML engine was also updated to version 3.0. Other new features included a new version of the Internet Explorer Administration Kit (IEAK), Media bar, Windows Messenger integration, fault collection, automatic image resizing, P3P, and a new look-and-feel that was in line with the Luna
visual style of Windows XP, when used in Windows XP. Internet Explorer
6.0 SP1 offered several security enhancements and coincided with the
Windows XP SP1 patch release. In 2002, the Gopher protocol was disabled and support for it was dropped in Internet Explorer 7. Internet Explorer 6.0 SV1 came out August 6, 2004 for Windows XP SP2
and offered various security enhancements and new color buttons on the
user interface. Internet Explorer 6 updated the original ‘blue e’ logo
to a lighter blue and more 3D look.
Microsoft now considers IE6 to be an obsolete product and recommends
that users upgrade to Internet Explorer 8. Some corporate IT users have
not upgraded despite this, in part because some still use Windows 2000, which
will not run Internet Explorer 7 or above.

Internet Explorer 7

Internet Explorer 7 was released on October 18, 2006. It includes bug fixes, enhancements to its support for web standards, tabbed browsing with tab preview and management, a multiple-engine search box, a web feeds reader, Internationalized Domain Name support (IDN), Extended Validation Certificate
support, and anti-phishing filter. With IE7, Internet Explorer has been
decoupled from the Windows Shell—unlike previous versions, the Internet
Explorer ActiveX control
is not hosted in the Windows Explorer process, but rather runs in a
separate Internet Explorer process. It is included with Windows Vista
and Windows Server 2008, and is available for Windows XP Service Pack 2
and later, and Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1 and later. The
original release of Internet Explorer 7 required the computer to pass a Windows Genuine Advantage validation check prior to installing, but on October 5, 2007, Microsoft
removed this requirement. As some statistics show, by mid-2008, Internet
Explorer 7 market share exceeded that of Internet Explorer 6 in a number of
regions.

Internet Explorer 8

Internet Explorer 8 was released on March 19, 2009. It had been in
development since August 2007 at the latest. On March 5, 2008, the first public beta (Beta 1) was released to the general public. On August 27, 2008, the second public beta (Beta 2) was released. It is supported in Windows XP SP2 and SP3, Windows Server 2003 SP2, Windows Vista, Windows 7, and Windows Server 2008
on both 32-bit as well as 64-bit architectures.
Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) RC1 was released on January 26, 2009.
Internet Explorer 8 “Final” was released on March 19, 2009. Security,
ease of use, and improvements in RSS, CSS, and Ajax support are Microsoft’s priorities for IE8. It includes much stricter compliance with web standards, including a planned full Cascading Style Sheets
2.1 compliance for the release version. All these changes allow Internet Explorer 8 to pass the Acid2
test.
However, to prevent compatibility issues, IE8 also includes the IE7
rendering behavior. Sites that expect IE7 quirks can disable IE8′s
breaking changes by including a meta element in the HEAD section of the HTML document. IE8 also includes numerous improvements to JavaScript support as well as performance improvements, although it still does not pass the Acid3
test, with version 8.0 scoring 20/100. It includes support for Accelerators—which allow supported web applications to be invoked without explicitly navigating to them—and WebSlices—which allows portions of page to be subscribed to and monitored from a redesigned Favorites Bar. Other features include InPrivate privacy features and SmartScreen phishing
filter.

Internet Explorer 9

Internet Explorer 9 was released on March 14, 2011. Development for Internet Explorer 9 began shortly after the release of Internet Explorer 8 (March 19, 2009). Microsoft began taking feedback and suggestions through Microsoft Connect. Microsoft first announced Internet Explorer 9 at PDC 2009 and spoke mainly about how it takes advantage of hardware acceleration in DirectX to improve the performance of web applications and improve the quality of web typography. At MIX 10,
Microsoft showed and publicly released the first Platform Preview for
Internet Explorer 9, a frame for IE9’s engine not containing any UI of
the browser. Leading up to the release of the final browser, Microsoft
released updated platform previews approximately every 6 weeks which
each featured improved JavaScript compiling (32-bit version), improved scores on the Acid3 test, as well as additional HTML5
standards support. Ultimately, 8 platform previews were released. The
first public beta was released at a special event in San Francisco,
which was themed around “the beauty of the web”. The release candidate
was released on February 10, 2011 and featured improved performance,
refinements to the UI, and further standards support. The final version
was released during the South by Southwest (SXSW) music and film festival in
Austin, Texas on March 14, 2011.

Internet Explorer 9 only runs on Windows Vista SP2 and Windows 7. It supports several CSS 3 properties (including border-radius, box-shadow, etc.), embedded ICC v2 or v4 color profiles support via Windows Color System, and the 32-bit version has faster JavaScript performance due to a new JavaScript engine called “Chakra". It also features hardware accelerated graphics rendering using Direct2D, hardware-accelerated text rendering using DirectWrite, hardware-accelerated video rendering using Media Foundation, imaging support provided by Windows Imaging Component, and high fidelity printing powered by the XPS
print pipeline. IE9 also supports the HTML5 video and audio tags and the Web Open Font Format. Internet Explorer 9 currently scores 95/100 on the Acid3 test.

Internet Explorer 10

Microsoft announced Internet Explorer 10 at MIX 11 in Las Vegas, releasing
the first Platform Preview at the same time. At the show, it was said that
Internet Explorer 10 was about 3 weeks in development.
This release further improves upon standards support, including CSS3
gradients. Internet Explorer 10 drops support for Windows Vista and will
only run on Windows 7 and Windows 8.