After nearly 30 years, Microsoft has finally decommissioned its first web browser, Internet Explorer, and it couldn't have arrived at a better time.
You wouldn't be able to avoid the 'e' icon that appeared on all Windows 95 machines if you were alive in the late 1990s. Some may just refer to it as "the internet," as it has become the finest internet browser available to the majority of customers.
While opera(opens in new tab) debuted in 1995 as a project that differed from the web browser we use nowadays, it was Microsoft's browser that swept the world by storm, owing to the fact that it became pre-installed on tens of thousands of machines.
However, we now live in a time when you may choose from a wide range of web browsers, from Opera to Firefox, each with its unique set of capabilities and user interfaces. But Internet Explorer started something that is still going on today, and we'll take a look at what it got right and wrong.
It inspired tabs
Internet Explorer 6(opens in new tab) was being prepared for release as the new century began, but it wasn't until 2006 that version seven with tabs was released.
Users were going to sites for news, communicating to others in forums about their hobbies, and purchasing online had become commonplace when the dot-com bubble burst in the late 1990s.
However, this meant that you'd have a slew of Internet Explorer windows on your taskbar with no option to rearrange them.
In 2004, Firefox(opens in new tab) was released, advertising tabs as a means to retain several windows in one. Nowadays, it's a standard feature, however back in 2000, you had to manage a lot of windows before your PC died due to memory usage.
Privacy became a right, not a commodity
Pop-ups, ads, Napster, and dial-up all harken back to a simpler, slower internet era. However, there was a lot of annoyance because third-party security software was normally required to enable a pop-up blocker and a firewall to safeguard your PC from hackers.
In 2004, when Windows XP Service Pack 2 was released to improve the security of the operating system, Internet Explorer acquired some new capabilities, including an integrated pop-up blocker and other enhancements.
As time went on, other browsers made privacy as important as tabs, multiple downloads, and other features. Internet Explorer opened the path for its successor, Microsoft Edge, to use it, just as Opera, Firefox, and Safari had done for years.
As a result, we're saying farewell to Internet Explorer and giving Microsoft Edge its due as the company's single online browser.
When it comes developing apps, there are times when starting over is preferable to improving on a decades-old basis, which is where Edge comes in. Edge has a focus on privacy and functionality for the modern day, while it isn't as popular as Internet Explorer was, with Google Chrome now topping the web browser market share.
From Xbox to Edge to Windows, Microsoft increasingly sees its apps as services. It wants its products to be available on as many devices as possible, offering customers a variety of options. It's a far cry from the Microsoft of the 1990s, when you needed a Windows PC to visit a world wide web that mostly supported Internet Explorer to view graphics and web pages correctly.
Thankfully, circumstances have changed, and in the last 30 years, the internet has evolved into something altogether different.
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