Internet Explorer

From Hak5

Internet Explorer is the web browser produced by Microsoft, and is currently the most popular browser in use in computing today.

[edit] History

Internet Explorer was originally created as a competing browser to Netscape's popular Netscape Navigator suite. Early versions were known for being very user-friendly and highly decorated, quite interesting considering the resources Microsoft had to work with in most home computers.

While Internet Explorer started off as a separate package, Microsoft soon realized that it could gain market share by bundling it with its popular Windows operating system. It did so starting with Windows 95, where users had access to Internet Explorer 4. With the release of Windows 98, Microsoft sought even further integration with Windows, and developed Windows 98 as a web-oriented operating system. All file manipulation features (i.e. moving, copying, or deleting files, or navigating through the system) were designed to act as if they were a web page, and Internet Explorer was used for both local file and remote web browsing.

This integration was the cause for a United States government probe into the operating procedures of Microsoft, and resulted in an antitrust ruling.

[edit] Today

Today, Internet Explorer still holds onto its reputation for being the most popular browser in use, though competitors such as Mozilla Firefox and Opera are gaining support and attracting "former" Internet Explorer users everyday.

Of course, being the most popular browser means that it is the most popular target for attacks. Previous versions of Internet Explorer (4 through 6) were notorious for their hardcore integration with the operating system, and their use in daily tasks. Coupling that with Microsoft's bug-prone ActiveX live content system, new bugs are constantly being found and exploited by the hacker community. Internet Explorer 7 has since attempted to stop this exploitation, by including such features as removal from the core operatinhg system features and (for some users, such as Windows Vista users, the ability to operate in a "Sandbox" mode where absolutely no system modification can take place).

Until the release of Internet Explorer 7, IE was well known for not having a tabbed-browsing feature, something that initially drew attention to its competitors.

[edit] Internet Explorer on Other OSes

While Internet Explorer is primarily designed to run on Windows, alternate versions were released for other operating systems. The most popular version is undoubtedly the Internet Explorer for Mac suite, which was discontinued after Microsoft saw that it was fighting a losing battle for the Macintosh browser market to Apple's offering, Safari, and Mozilla-based browsers such as Camino and Firefox.

In addition to serving as the browser for Windows-based desktop and laptop machines, Microsoft maintains a version of Internet Explorer for Pocket PC-based PDAs, called Pocket Internet Explorer (or commonly just "Internet Explorer" after its full-sized cousin).

A Unix version of IE also saw development, but the project was shortlived and scrapped quickly.