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Internet Explorer Browser Collection
- crehn 7y agoThat animated Windows logo in the IE status bar brings up a lot of memories. Did it have any real purpose?
- userbinator 7y agoIt's a loading indicator. A far more obvious one than the tiny spinning circles that seem popular today.
- Cthulhu_ 7y agoIt makes sense; you want to make your app so that even the tiny spinning circles aren't even visible. I added a feature to a webapp in a previous project that would only start showing a spinner if loading a page or section took >1 second. If it's any slower you'd see a flashing spinner, which is not very nice.
- kawsper 7y agoThe Netscape loading logo is the one I feel very nostalgic about, if we can have animated gravestones when I die, that is the one I want to have on mine https://imgur.com/a/G6quKu8 https://imgur.com/a/G6quKu8
- golfer 7y agoConnections were much slower back then. Sometimes you'd go a few seconds or more without anything happening on the screen. The loading animation was nice so you knew your browser wasn't frozen.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- mugsie 7y agoIt is missing 5.5 - I have memories of that being a kind of important version ...
- mobilio 7y agoI also notice that. If i remember correctly i use it lot on Windows 2000.
- ChrisSD 7y ago5.5 was the last version that MS actually cared about IIRC. 6 had a few meaningful additions and tweaks but it had become noticeable that MS wasn't prioritizing development. And of course after 6 MS didn't care much at all until competition came along...
- andreasmaurer 7y agoUgh, the memories of CSS hacks that worked for IE 5.0 and IE 6.0, but broke in IE 5.5 ...
- zapzupnz 7y agoNo Mac versions, pocket versions, console versions yet. I loved the Mac version back in the days before Safari, it was actually a pretty fantastic browser for the time.
- classichasclass 7y agoNone of the Unix versions either. I have IE5 on a PA-RISC PrecisionBook here and it's not bad, but it took a little digging to find.
- Gwxz 7y agoThe Mac version included in the archive IE2-IE5
- tonny747 7y agoIt looks like it sourced its downloads from https://winworldpc.com/product/internet-explorer/ https://winworldpc.com/product/internet-explorer/.
- userbinator 7y agoFor some reason, that domain name arouses my suspicion... if I saw that in the search results I'd probably think "SEO spam site" and skip over it. One of the obvious things you can see between the versions is the gradual trend of dumbing-down and flattening the UI, most apparent between 8 and 9. The older versions' UI give the impression that they are very customisable and powerful, while the newer ones seem to be implicitly saying "you have no control (anymore)." I'd love to use a browser with a newer rendering engine, but retain the old UI. I also noticed the sizes are a little weird: IE1: 2.88MB IE2: 17.9MB IE3: 232MB(!?) IE4: 357MB IE5: 640MB IE6: 105MB IE7: 78MB IE8: 147MB IE9: 207MB IE10: 218MB IE11: 166MB I remember using those older versions of IE on systems with hard drives smaller than that.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- hajile 7y agoIE4 -- 11MB IE5 -- 56MB IE6 -- 13MB Their sizes seem to be off (or including something extra). But there definitely is a huge change in IE5 requirements. I'm guessing that's related to the US v Microsoft antitrust bundling lawsuit. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Explorer_4#System_requirements https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Explorer_4#System_req... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Explorer_5#System_and_hardware_requirements https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Explorer_5#System_and... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Explorer_6#System_requirements https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Explorer_6#System_req...
- Cthulhu_ 7y agoI wonder if IE 6 could lean more on existing libraries (renderers etc) in the OS itself; maybe the IE 6 version for older systems than Windows XP were comparable in size to IE 5?
- micmil 7y agoThat seems likely. What's funny is how Edge (and eventually IE) became even more entrenched in the system than before, yet nobody cares anymore. Almost like the whole thing was a bunch of arm-waving by nerds and regulators that wanted to pretend they knew what was going on.
- maaaats 7y agoAre the downloads the old, compiled code? The iexplore.exe in IE 1.5 says modified in 1996. And it runs on my Windows in 2019. That's a feat! (Can't find any pages to open, though, guess it's too old http and possible tls stuff in the way?) Edit: Found some urls that worked
- hadrien01 7y agohttp://example.com http://example.com should work, it doesn't force https
- maaaats 7y agoCan't get it to work. But http://matsemann.com http://matsemann.com works. I think the difference is that my domain works even without a "Host" header. Edit: Not quite correct that it works. My domain responds with a different dummy-page in IE 1.5. I get the same dummy-page with curl curl http://matsemann.com -i --http1.0 -v -H 'Host:' Difference being it's served as 200, while same command for example.com with no host gives 404. I think the web is just broken without host headers, as too much is running on the same ips / through routers before touching the real underlying page.
- Freak_NL 7y agoHost headers are explicitly required by the spec, and there are no clients left that leave them out (including non-browser clients like curl and wget). There is simply no reason to facilitate requests that have no Host header, so servers receiving them quite rightly serve some kind of error response.
- kibibu 7y agoRequired by the HTTP 1.1 spec, not the HTTP 1.0 spec
- justusthane 7y agoOr http://neverssl.com http://neverssl.com
- izietto 7y agoAs a long-time web developer, when I clicked on IE6 and I saw its screenshot I felt queasy for a brief moment. Not joking.
- dsfyu404ed 7y agoAs a non-web developer all I felt was nostalgia.
- izietto 7y agoI felt a bit of nostalgia too, but I think mainly for Windows XP UI. Maybe it wasn't very polished but it looked pretty funny and friendly; it made you feel like at home -- especially Windows XP Home Edition (ok ok I'm sorry...)
- mostlysimilar 7y agoFor me it was both. IE6 was my first browser growing up so it was a huge blast of nostalgia. Then I felt angry thinking about it remembering all of the hacks to get it to behave as a web developer. Fun roller coaster.
- usermac 7y agoWow. Version 1 was August of 1995. I discovered the Internet in September.
- pedrocx486 7y agoTwo years after the infamous September that never ended. Kinda curious here, but it being September so I guess college?
- dspillett 7y ago> it being September so I guess college? Yes. September was the month that many new users discovered the Internet for the first time, because they were given access at University and other higher education establishments, which had many and varied implications. For instance there was an influx of beginner questions in Usenet groups, questions to which the answer was "please read the FAQ before asking more questions". There was also just a general influx of activity: groups would see a bump in user numbers and activity that didn't fall back off over time. New users arrived all through the year of course, but in smaller numbers and tended to be more technically proficient (and aware with network etiquette) to start with because they had sought (and paid for) access for a reason, rather than being given it and being told to go explore. From 1993 onwards the public more generally were becoming a lot more aware of the Internet and being told about the things it could potentially do for them, so there was a more constant flow of new (often relatively non-technical) users & activity rather than just a big glut each September, which is why that year was referred to as "the September that never ended".
- kermitismyhero 7y agoThis is like the software equivalent of Red Letter Media's video library.
- heinrichhartman 7y agoI have good memories using IE3,4,5. With IE6 the UI took a turn for the worse. The look of IE7 freaks me out. Edge just looks like Chrome, which is acceptable to me.
- acheron 7y agoSame. I remember arguing with a friend in late 2000 who still insisted on using Netscape 4. I had given up on Netscape years before and stuck with IE from around 3 through 5.5. I actually don't remember using 6 much on purpose. I know I switched to Phoenix at v0.4 and never touched IE again, which was apparently October 2002; IE6 had been at the end of 2001. It's possible I was using IE6 for that yearish, though I didn't start using XP for awhile, preferring to stick with Windows 2000.
- chrismorgan 7y agoIn 2012 I worked with a Windows 2000 Server machine that had IE5.5, and had to make a UI for a simple task on it. I chose to go with HTA. I tried to make my life easier by installing IE6, but failed to install it. It took me a while to even find an IE6 installer (the original links were all dead), and once I finally did, I couldn’t install it (it asked the internet for something as part of the process, and that part was broken).
- 24gttghh 7y agoIf you could find what the installer was actually looking for, you could setup a proxy server to rewrite the URL and point it to someplace that has it e.g. locally.
- chrismorgan 7y agoI have no idea whether what it sought was important or not. Half of the difficulty in doing any debugging of anything was that most tools even in 2012 were no longer supporting 2000. Even Wireshark may not have run there; but I didn’t try it. I just gave up after a couple of hours of trying to get it working, and stayed on IE5.5.
- AriaMinaei 7y agoWeeks of my life have been wasted working around the incidental complexity of IE6. Yet, it was a very sad day when I heard they're killing off Edge. This tweetstorm of mine[0] is relevant: I'm sad they are killing it off. Like really, really, sad. Edge is a feat of engineering. Like operating systems, and other major browsers. These things are rare. And they're way too advanced to just kill off. I remember IE9 being the very first browser to bet on the web being a gaming platform (not counting Flash here). Chrome was the fastest for documents/GDocs-style apps, but nothing beat IE9 in multimedia performance. I remember learning about layout thrashing and how it causes re-paint and jank. There was an infinite zoom demo somewhere on the internet that worked by resetting width/height on wheel events. Webkit/Gecko/Presto would render it at like 2 fps. Trident? 60 fps with lots to spare. Interactive audio, pre Audio API was impossible in all other engines. I remember they had rewritten Cut The Rope in JS, but had to use Flash for audio. Reason was, calling el.play () on a fully loaded <audio> tag was laggy on all browsers. All except IE9 of course. I remember they did not support 3D transforms. But the 2D stuff would run the smoothest on IE9. No scaling artifacts; no aliased edges; IOW, actually usable in a multimedia setting. You cannot have interactive content without smooth animation and responsive audio. This vision, of seeing the web as a multimedia platform, was unique to IE. As in, they were the first one actually delivering on it. In fact, IE9 was so good, the dev team behind it so talented, it only served to show how all that talent had gone to waste all those years between IE6 and 8. (One out of many examples of financial incentive stifling talent and innovation.) And it wasn't only technical talent either. Their developer outreach program was special. They sponsored a whole bunch of projects, from rewriting popular mobile games in JS, to original web-based experiences, showcasing what had only just then become possible to do on the web. That outreach program showed that the open web can be more than a static platform of paper-esque documents. Rather it can be a safe medium of interactive content, allowing ever more complex ideas to be communicated. This was powerful, and inspiring. Back to the technical side, the vast majority of innovations in EdgeHTML will never be incorporated into Blink. The architectures surely are too different. Edge's innovations will simply bitrot in a close-sourced codebase waiting to be EOLed. I can't imagine how disappointed the team must be. Years of their best work—truly great work—thrown out. Just like that. To my fellow engineers at Edge: You all did an amazing job. And you deserved better. Last thing I'd say even if obvious: Use Firefox. Contribute to Firefox. Tell your friends to use Firefox. You'd be fighting the monoculture, AND getting the best browsing experience out there. [0] https://twitter.com/ariaminaei/status/1072516777937129473 https://twitter.com/ariaminaei/status/1072516777937129473
- adighe 7y agoThe fact that the archives are RAR makes this so much better!
- creativeembassy 7y agoInternet Explorer 2, in 1995, had support for VRML. A full 20 years before the Oculus Rift officially launched. I had never heard of that markup language and had to Google it. Talk about being ahead of its time...
- shrikant 7y agoIIRC around that time, there was VRML porn that could only be viewed with Netscape Navigator, and IE often struggled with this. Source: A friend of a friend, of course...
- jgrahamc 7y agoYep. Around that time (1996 I think) I built a prototype UI for doing exploration of a network and its connectivity in VRML.
- wink 7y agoMaybe my filter bubble, but VRML was kind of talked about in the late 90s (when we got on the internet) but the implementation, features, and general application state was more of a running joke. Also that's probably why it faded so relatively quickly, nobody used it.
- stiGGG 7y agoI remember the most famous techno club from my nearest city used that to provide a virtual room tour on their website. I was too young then to get past the bouncers and liked that feature :)
- wink 7y agoThat's really cool. I honestly don't remember seeing anything besides Hello World examples and they didn't really impress me :|
- 52-6F-62 7y agoOh I remember playing around with some of the 3D chats that came out using that in the late 90s. I was amazed. (A little post-IE2, mind)
- Kipters 7y agoI noticed the Edge page does not make any distinction between Spartan (current EdgeHTML-based version) and Anaheim (future Chromium-based version). The downloadable rar contains Anaheim though.
- pweezy 7y agoBrowsing through the screenshots of each version on this site, I was struck by how good the IE logo looked from the version 4 installer. I realized why when I got to version 10, released some 15 years later. The flat "modern" update to the logo is identical to the one from IE4, just with a lighter font weight.
- kccqzy 7y agoIt is weird that IE 5 listed Mac OS 5.2.3 in the operating system. That's totally wrong for several reasons. First Mac OS was a name introduced since version 8 or so, and before that it was called System. Second I don't really think System 5.2.3 actually exists. Third and perhaps more importantly the Mac versions of IE were done by a completely different team within Microsoft, using a different rendering engine and having a different set of quirks. IIRC the Mac version gained full PNG support many years before the Windows version did; it was in fact the first browser to do so. I wouldn't really consider IE for Mac together with IE for Windows. They are more like two different products with a same name.
- etaioinshrdlu 7y agoI would just like to point out that IE up til 5.0 ran on Unix including Solaris. Isn't that a bit mind blowing?
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- runciblespoon 7y agoActually Internet Explorer 1.0 was a rebranded Spyglass browser . After failing to get an exclusive license from Mosaic Netscape and failing to get an exclusive license from the NCSA, Microsoft does get a non-exclusive license for a browser from Spyglass, that was 'given away' with Windows as Internet Explorer 1.0 around 1994. As such Microsoft deemed it unnecessary to actually pay Spyglass. Mosaic Netscape was released in 1994, despite this factoid, in 1996 we have Bill Gates welcoming Netscape into the Industry. https://web.archive.org/web/20120618054817/http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Spyglass https://web.archive.org/web/20120618054817/http://www.nation... https://www.cnet.com/news/gates-draws-roadmap-for-intranet/ https://www.cnet.com/news/gates-draws-roadmap-for-intranet/
- Gwxz 7y agoThanks for sharing your experience!