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Windows Internet Explorer

Version 7 running on Windows Vista.
Developed by	Microsoft
Initial release	August 1995
Latest release	7.0.5730.13 (Windows XP/Server 2003) 7.0.6001.18000 (Vista SP1/Server 2008)
Preview release	8.0.6001.18241 (IE8, Beta 2) / August 27, 2008
OS	Microsoft Windows Mac OS System 7 to OS X (discontinued) Solaris and HP-UX (discontinued) Windows 3.1 to Me (discontinued)
License	Proprietary MS-EULA
Website	microsoft.com/ie 1 · 2 · 3 · 4 · 5 · 6 · 7 · 8

Windows Internet Explorer (formerly Microsoft Internet Explorer abbreviated MSIE), commonly abbreviated to IE, is a series of graphical web browsers developed by Microsoft and included as part of the Microsoft Windows line of operating systems starting in 1995. It has been the most widely used web browser since 1999, attaining a peak of about 95% usage share during 2002 and 2003 with IE5 and IE6 but steadily declining since, despite the introduction of IE7. Microsoft spent over $100 million a year^[1] in the late 1990s, with over 1,000 people working on IE by 1999.^[2]

Internet Explorer was first released as part of the add-on package Plus! for Windows 95 in 1995. Later versions were available as free downloads, or in service packs, and included in the OEM service releases of Windows 95 and later versions of Windows. The most recent release is version Internet Explorer 7, which is available as a free update for Windows XP Service Pack 2, and Windows Server 2003 with Service Pack 1 or later, Windows Vista, and Windows Server 2008. Internet Explorer 8 is under development and is slated for release in 2009.

Other versions available since the late 1990s include an embedded OEM version called Internet Explorer for Windows CE (IE CE) available for WinCE based platforms and is currently based on IE6. Internet Explorer for Pocket PC, later rebranded Internet Explorer Mobile for Windows Mobile was also developed, and remain in development alongside the more advanced desktop versions.

Contents 1 History 1.1 Version 1 1.2 Version 2 1.3 Version 3 1.4 Version 4 1.5 Version 5 1.6 Version 6 1.7 Version 7 1.8 Version 8 2 Features 2.1 Standards support 2.2 Standards extensions 2.3 Favicon 2.4 Usability and accessibility 2.5 Cache 2.6 Group Policy 3 Architecture 4 Extensibility 5 Security 5.1 Security vulnerabilities 6 Market adoption and usage share 6.1 Market share by year and version 6.2 Industry adoption 7 OS compatibility 8 "Standalone" Internet Explorer 9 Removal 10 References 11 See also 12 External links

[edit] History

Main article: History of Internet Explorer

The Internet Explorer project was started in the summer of 1994 by Thomas Reardon and subsequently led by Benjamin Slivka, leveraging 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.^[3]

[edit] Version 1

Internet Explorer 1.0 debuted in August 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 OEM release of Windows 95. It was installed as part of the Internet Jumpstart Kit in Plus!.^[4] The Internet Explorer team began with about half a dozen people in early development.^[1][2] Internet Explorer 1.5 was released several months later for Windows NT and added support for basic table rendering. However, by including it for free on their OS they did not have to pay royalties to Spyglass Inc., which resulted in a lawsuit and multi-million USD settlement.

[edit] Version 2

Main article: Internet Explorer 2

Internet Explorer 2.0 was released for Windows 95, Windows NT 3.5, and NT 4.0 in November 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.^[5] 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, ^[6] 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.^[7] The 2.0i version supported double-byte character-set.^[7]

[edit] Version 3

Main article: Internet Explorer 3

Internet Explorer 3.0, was released in August 1996, and went on to be much more popular than its predecessors. It was developed without Spyglass source code, although still crediting Spyglass "technology" in the program's documentation. Internet Explorer 3 was the first major browser with CSS support, although this support was only partial. Released on August 13, 1996, 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.^[9] The Internet Explorer team consisted of roughly 100 people during the development of three months.^[1] The first major IE security hole, the Princeton Word Macro Virus Loophole, was discovered on August 22, 1996 in IE3.^[10] 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 separate directory.^[11]

[edit] Version 4

Main article: Internet Explorer 4

Internet Explorer 4.0, 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. 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 which allow you to save and retrieve posts in comment forms which are still not being used today.

Internet Explorer 4.5 dropped support for 68k Macs, but 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.^[12][13][14]

[edit] Version 5

Main article: Internet Explorer 5

Internet Explorer 5.0, 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" wasn't 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. Version 5.5 also included support for 128-bit encryption. 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^[15] to be run side by side with the 5.x.^[9][16] The IE team consisted of over 1,000 people by 1999, with funding on the order of 100 million USD per year.^[1][2]

[edit] Version 6

Main article: Internet Explorer 6

Market Share for February, 2005 [17]
IE4 - .07%
IE5 - 6.17%
IE6 - 82.79%

Internet Explorer 6.0 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.^[18] 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 XP SP1 patch release. In 2002, the Gopher protocol was disabled and support for it was dropped in Internet Explorer 7.^[19]

Internet Explorer 6.0 SP2 ^[20] came out August 6, 2004 for Windows XP SP2 and offered various security enhancements and new color buttons on the user interface. IE6 updated the original 'blue e' logo to a lighter blue and more 3-d look.^[9] IE6 will be phased out completely in early January 2009 and users using IE6 will be forced to install IE7, apparently.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Version 7

Main article: 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), 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 exceeded Internet Explorer 6 in number of users.^[21]

[edit] Version 8

This article or section contains information about computer software currently in development. The content may change as the software development progresses.

Main article: Internet Explorer 8

Internet Explorer 8 is the latest version of Internet Explorer and has been in development since August 2007 at the latest.^[22] On March 5, 2008, the first public beta (Beta 1) was released to the general public.^[23] On August 27, 2008, the second public beta (Beta 2) was released.^[24] It supports Windows XP SP2 and SP3, Windows Server 2003 SP2, Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 on both 32-bit as well as 64-bit architectures.^[25]

Security, ease of use, and improvements in RSS, CSS, and Ajax support are Microsoft's priorities for IE8.^[26][27] It includes much stricter compliance with web standards, including a planned full Cascading Style Sheets 2.1 compliance for the release version.^[28] All these changes allow Internet Explorer 8 to pass the Acid2 test.^[29] 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.

IE8 also includes numerous improvements to JavaScript support as well as performance improvements.^[28] 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.^[28] Other features include InPrivate privacy features, and SmartScreen phishing filter. ^[30]

[edit] Features

Internet Explorer has been designed to view a broad range of web pages and to provide certain features within the operating system, including Microsoft Update. During the heyday of the historic browser wars, Internet Explorer superseded Netscape only when it caught up technologically to support the progressive features of the time.^[31]

[edit] Standards support

Internet Explorer, using the Trident layout engine:

• fully supports HTML 4.01, CSS Level 1, XML 1.0 and DOM Level 1, with minor implementation gaps.
• fully supports XSLT 1.0 as well as an obsolete Microsoft dialect of XSLT often referred to as WD-xsl, which was loosely based on the December 1998 W3C Working Draft of XSL. Support for XSLT 2.0 lies in the future: semi-official Microsoft bloggers have indicated that development is underway, but no dates have been announced.
• partially supports CSS Level 2 and DOM Level 2, with major implementation gaps and conformance issues. Full conformance to the CSS 2.1 specification is on the agenda for the final Internet Explorer 8 release.^[32].
• does not support XHTML, though it can render XHTML documents authored with HTML compatibility principles and served with a text/html MIME-type.
• does not support SVG, neither for current version 7.0, nor for upcoming 8.0 version^[33].

Internet Explorer uses DOCTYPE sniffing to choose between "quirks mode" (renders similarly to older versions of MSIE) and standards mode (renders closer to W3C's specifications) for HTML and CSS rendering on screen (Internet Explorer always uses standards mode for printing). It also provides its own dialect of ECMAScript called JScript.

Internet Explorer has been subjected to criticism over its limited support for open web standards and a major goal of Internet Explorer 8 is to improve support for such standards^{[citation needed]}.

[edit] Standards extensions

Internet Explorer has introduced an array of proprietary extensions to many of the standards, including HTML, CSS and the DOM. This has resulted in a number of web pages that can only be viewed properly using Internet Explorer.

Internet Explorer has introduced a number of extensions to JScript which have been adopted by other browsers. These include the innerHTML property, which returns the HTML string within an element; the XMLHttpRequest object, which allows the sending of ly related to that of Microsoft Windows, as it is the default web browser that comes with Windows. Since the integration of Internet Explorer 2.0 with Windows 95 OSR 1 in 1996, and especially after version 4.0's release, the adoption was greatly accelerated: from below 20% in 1996 to about 40% in 1998 and over 80% in 2000.

A CNN article noted at the release of Internet Explorer 4:"Microsoft's Internet Explorer has made inroads and various estimates put its share of the browser market 30 to 35 percent from about 10 percent a year ago."^[44] By 2002, Internet Explorer had almost completely superseded its main rival Netscape and dominated the market with up to 95 percent market share.

After having fought and won the browser wars of the late 1990s, Internet Explorer gained almost total dominance of the browser market. Having attained a peak of about 95% during 2002 and 2003, its market share has since declined at a slow but steady pace. This is mainly due to the adoption of Mozilla Firefox, which statistics indicate is currently the most significant competition. Nevertheless, Internet Explorer remains the dominant web browser, with a global usage share of around 75% (though measurements vary). Usage is higher in Asia and lower in Europe.

Firefox 1.0 had surpassed Internet Explorer 5 in early 2005 with Firefox 1.0 at roughly 8 percent market share.^[45] An article notes at the release of Internet Explorer 7 in October 2006 that "IE6 had the lion's share of the browser market with 77.22%. Internet Explorer 7 had climbed to 3.18%, while Firefox 2.0 was at 0.69%."^[46]

Internet Explorer 7 was released at the same time as Firefox 2.0, and overtook Firefox 1.x by November 2006, at roughly 9% market share. ^[47] Firefox 2.0 had overtaken 1.x by January 2007, ^[48], but IE7 did not surpass IE6 until December 2007. ^[49] By January 2008, their respective version market share stood at 43% IE7, 32% IE6, 16% FF2, 4% SF 3, and both FF1.x and IE5 versions at less than half a percent. ^[50]

[edit] Market share by year and version

Approximate usage over time based on various usage share counters averaged for the year overall, or for the fourth quarter, or for the last month in the year depending on availability of reference. ^{[51][52][53][54][55][56]}

	Total	IE8	IE7	IE6	IE5	IE4	IE3	IE2	IE1
2007	sm=n 78.6%[51] ▼	sm=n -	sm=n 45.5%[51] ▲	sm=n 32.64%[51] ▼	sm=n 0.45%[51] ▼	sm=n 0.01%[51] ▼	sm=n 0%	sm=n 0%	sm=n 0%
2006	sm=n 83.3%[51] ▼	sm=n -	sm=n 3.49%[51] ▲	sm=n 78.08%[51] ▼	sm=n 1.42%[51] ▼	sm=n 0.02%[51] ▼	sm=n 0%	sm=n 0%	sm=n 0%
2005	sm=n 87.12%[51] ▼	sm=n -	sm=n -	sm=n 82.71%[51] ▼	sm=n 4.35%[51] ▼	sm=n 0.06%[51] ▼	sm=n 0%	sm=n 0%	sm=n 0%
2004	sm=n 91.27%[51] ▼	sm=n -	sm=n -	sm=n 83.39%[51] ▲	sm=n 7.77sm=n%[51] ▼	sm=n 0.10%[51] ▼	sm=n 0%	sm=n 0%	sm=n 0%
2003	sm=n 94.43%[53] ▲	sm=n -	sm=n -	sm=n 59%[53] ▲	sm=n sm=n34%[53] ▼	sm=n 1%[53] ▼	sm=n 0%	sm=n 0%	sm=n 0%
2002	sm=n 93.94%[53] ▲	sm=n -	sm=n -	sm=n 50%[53] ▲	sm=n sm=n41%[53] ▼	sm=n 1%[53] ▼	sm=n 0%	sm=n 0%	sm=n 0%
2001	sm=n 90.83%[53] ▲	sm=n -	sm=n -	sm=n 19%[53] ▲	sm=n sm=n68sm=n%sm=n[53] ▼	sm=n 5.0%[53] ▼	sm=n 0%	sm=n 0%	sm=n 0%
2000	sm=n 83.95%[53] ▲	sm=n -	sm=n -	sm=n -	sm=n sm=n71%[53] ▲	sm=n sm=n13%[53] ▼	sm=n 0%	sm=n 0%	sm=n 0%
1999	sm=n 75.31%[56] ▲	sm=n -	sm=n -	sm=n -	sm=n sm=n41%[53] ▲	sm=n sm=n36%[53] ▼	sm=n 1%[53]	sm=n 0%	sm=n 0%
1998	sm=n 45%[55] ▲	sm=n -	sm=n -	sm=n -	sm=n -	sm=n  ? ▲	sm=n  ?	sm=n  ?	sm=n  ?
1997	sm=n 39.4%[52] ▲	sm=n -	sm=n -	sm=n -	sm=n -	sm=n  ? ▲	sm=n  ?	sm=n  ?	sm=n  ?
1996	sm=n 20%[52] ▲	sm=n -	sm=n -	sm=n -	sm=n -	sm=n -	sm=n  ?	sm=n  ?	sm=n  ?
1995	sm=n 2.9%[52] ▲	sm=n -	sm=n -	sm=n -	sm=n -	sm=n -	sm=n -	sm=n  ?	sm=n  ?

[edit] Industry adoption

The proprietary extension mechanism ActiveX is used by many public websites and web applications, including eBay. Similarly, Browser Helper Objects are also used by many search engine companies and third parties for creating add-ons that access their services, such as search engine toolbars. Because of the use of COM, it is possible to embed web-browsing functionality in third-party applications. Hence, there are a number of Internet Explorer shells, and a number of content-centric applications like RealPlayer also use Internet Explorer's web browsing module for viewing web pages within the applications.

[edit] OS compatibility

IE versions, over time, have had widely varying OS compatibility, ranging from being available for many platforms and several versions of Windows to only a few versions of Windows. Many versions of IE had some support for an older OS but stopped getting updates. The increased growth of the Internet in the 1990s and 2000s means that current browsers with small market shares have more total users than the entire market early on. For example, 90% market share in 1997 would be roughly 60 million^[57] users, but by the start of 2007 90% market share would equate to over 900 million users.^[57] The result is that later versions of IE6 had many more users in total than all the early versions put together.

The release of IE7 at the end of 2006 resulted in a collapse of IE6 market share; by February 2007 market version share statistics showed IE6 at about 50% and IE7 at 29%.^[58] Regardless of the actual market share, the most compatible version (across operating systems) of IE was 5.x, which had Mac OS 9 and Mac OS X, Unix, and most Windows versions available and supported for a short period in the late 1990s (although 4.x had a more unified codebase across versions) By 2007, IE had much narrower OS support, with the latest versions supporting only Windows XP Service Pack 2 and above.

	Years	Layout engine	Microsoft Windows									IBM OS/2	Apple Inc. Macintosh				Unix (HP-UX, Solaris)
			Vista, WS 08	WS 03	XP	Me	2000	98	NT 4.0	95	3.1/NT 3.x		X PPC	9 PPC	8 PPC/68k	7 PPC/68k
Years	-	-	2006	2003	2001	2000	2000	1998	1996	1995	1992	1988	2001	1999	1997	1991	(1990s)
IE 8	2008-	Trident VI	Beta	Beta (with SP2)	Beta (with SP2/SP3)	No	No	No	No	No	No	No	No	No	No	No	No
IE 7	2006-	Trident V	Included	Yes (with SP1/SP2)	Yes (with SP2/SP3****)	No	No	No	No	No	No	No	No	No	No	No	No
IE 6	2001	Trident IV	No	Included	Included	Dropped 6.0 SP1	Dropped 6.0 SP1	Dropped 6.0 SP1	Dropped 6.0 SP1	No	No	No	No	No	No	No	No
IE 5.5	2000	Trident III	No	No	No***	Included	Yes	Yes	Yes	Dropped	No	No	No	No	No	No	No
IE 5.0	1999	Trident II (Win) Tasman (Mac)	No	No	No***	No	Included 5.01	Included	Yes	Yes	Dropped 5.0	?	Dropped 5.2.3 Included	Dropped 5.1.7 Included	Dropped 5.1.7		Dropped 5.01 SP1
IE 4.0	1997	Trident					No	Included		Included**	Yes		No	Included	Included	Yes	Yes
IE 3.0	1996	-	No	No	No***	No	No ***	No	Yes	Included**	Yes	Win 3.1 version	No	No	Included	Yes	Beta
IE 2.0	1995	-	No	No	No	No	No	No	Included	Included**	Yes		No	No	No	Yes	No
IE 1.5	1996	Spyglass	No	No	No	No	No	No	Yes	Yes	No	No	No	No	No	No	No
IE 1.0	1995	Spyglass							No	Plus!

^[59][60]

^* Internet Explorer 6 SP2 is only available as part of Windows XP SP2 or Windows Server 2003 SP1 or SP2.
^** The version of Internet Explorer included with Windows 95 varied by OSR release; 2.0 was included with OSR1, 3.0 was included with OSR2, and 4.0 was included with OSR2.5.
^*** No native support, but possible with third-party "Standalone" installer.
^**** Final version of Windows XP Service Pack 3 does not include IE7.

See also Internet Explorer Mobile. Non-desktop versions of IE have supported Windows CE also.

[edit] "Standalone" Internet Explorer

Early versions of Internet Explorer such as 5 had a compatibility mode to run Internet Explorer 4, though this feature was dropped (also MacUsers could still use 4.5 after installing 5). While Microsoft claims it is impossible to keep multiple versions of Internet Explorer on the same machine, some hackers have successfully separated several versions of Internet Explorer, making them standalone applications. These are referred to as "standalone" IEs and have included versions 3 through 7.

• Multiple IEs in Windows Web Design^{[dead link]} — The web developer Joe Maddalone who found the solution.
• Multiple Explorers — Downloads of all the versions, originally packaged by Ryan Parman.

Microsoft has discontinued standalone installers for Internet Explorer to the general public. However, there are unofficial procedures for downloading the complete install package. Internet Explorer standalone hacks exploit a known workaround to DLL hell, which was introduced in Windows 2000, called DLL redirection.

• Multiple IEs. An installer for the standalone versions of IE6, IE5.5, IE5.01, IE4.01, and IE3
• Microsoft Support document, with instructions for downloading the entire set of installation files.

It is also possible to install Internet Explorer via Wine.

• IEs4Linux automatically sets up Internet Explorer 5.0, 5.5, and 6.0 in Wine. Supporting Internet Explorer 7 is currently in development; as of August 2007, the IE7 rendering engine can be used with the IE6 user interface.^[61]

After Internet Explorer 7 is installed, an Internet Explorer 6 executable is still available in C:\WINDOWS\ie7, hidden by default. Launching this executable provides the user with the older IE6 interface, however web pages are rendered using the IE7 engine. The IE6 engine can be re-enabled by placing a file named "iexplore.exe.local" into the IE7 folder.

As an alternative to using IE standalone, Microsoft now makes available Microsoft Virtual PC images containing pre-activated copies of Windows XP with either IE 6 or IE 7 installed.^[62] Microsoft recommends this approach for web developers seeking to test their pages in the different versions of IE as the standalone versions are unsupported and may not work the same way as a properly installed copy of IE.^[63][64]

[edit] Removal

Main article: Removal of Internet Explorer

While a major upgrade of Internet Explorer can be uninstalled in a traditional way if the user has saved the original application files for uninstallation, the matter of uninstalling the version of the browser that has shipped with an operating system remains a controversial one.

The idea of removing a stock install of Internet Explorer from a Windows system was proposed during the United States v. Microsoft case. Critics^{[citation needed]} felt that users should have the right to uninstall Internet Explorer freely just like any other application software. One of Microsoft's arguments during the trial was that removing Internet Explorer from Windows may result in system instability.

The Australian computer scientist Shane Brooks demonstrated that Windows 98 could in fact run with Internet Explorer removed.^[65] Brooks went on to develop software designed to customize Windows versions by removing "undesired components", which is known as 98lite. He later created XPLite to support NT based operating systems. Both of these pieces of software can remove IE after the installation of the operating system.

There are methods for removing IE from a copy of the Windows install disc so it never touches the user's hard drive. A method developed by Fred Vorck^[66] involves the manual removal of IE from installation discs. His process has been automated as a feature of HFSLIP. nLite and HFSLIP are automated programs that allow users to exclude IE and many other Windows components from installation as desired. In some older versions of Windows and in Windows Fundamentals there is an option to install Internet Explorer.

Removing Internet Explorer does have a number of consequences. Some applications that depend on libraries installed by IE may fail to function, or have unexpected behaviors. Intuit's Quicken is a typical example, which depends heavily upon the HTML rendering components installed by the browser. The Windows help and support system will also not function due to the heavy reliance on HTML help files and components of IE. In versions of Windows before Vista, it is also not possible to run Microsoft's Windows Update or Microsoft Update with any other browser due to the service's implementation of an ActiveX control, which no other browser supports. In Windows Vista, Windows Update is implemented as a Control Panel applet.

[edit] References