Internet Explorer 2
Encyclopedia
Microsoft Internet Explorer 2 (abbreviated as IE2) is a graphical web browser
released on November 22, 1995 by Microsoft
for Windows 95
and Windows NT
and in April 1996 for Apple Macintosh and Windows 3.1
.
Version 2 launched with twelve languages including English but this expanded to 24 for Windows 95, 20 for Windows 3.1, and 9 for the Macintosh by April 1996. It lacked many features that became common in later IE versions, including the Blue 'e' logo, integration with Windows Explorer
, and bundled programs. Its market share was also much lower than later versions. During its tenure, IE market share only went up to about roughly 3-9% by mid 1996, before IE3 came out.
Internet Explorer 2 is no longer available for download from Microsoft. However, the archive 32-bit version is publicly available on the Evolt.org browser archive.
, and allowed importing bookmarks from it. In May 1996 FTP Software
announced it was providing Microsoft with various technology for Internet Explorer
2.0 for Windows 3.1, including a PPP network, 16-bit email client, and other technology.
for 95 that August. It was released for Windows 95 and Windows NT 3.5
in November 1995 and was bundled with NT 4.0
in July 1996. The Beta for Mac on PowerPC
came out in January, and the finalized version in April for 68k
and PowerPC. 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 was included in Windows 95 OEM
Service Release (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-sets
for supporting Japanese, Korean, Polish or Russian characters in web pages. Version 2.1 for the Mac came out in August 1996, the same month version 2 for Windows was superseded by Microsoft Internet Explorer 3
, which was heavily changed from version 2. There were 16-bit
and 32-bit
versions depending on the OS.
and QuickTime
formatted video and AIFF
, Midi and WAV
formatted audio. The non-beta final version was released three months later on April 23, 1996. Version 2.1 fixed bugs and improving stability, but also added a few features such as support for the NPAPI
(the first version of Internet Explorer on any platform to do so) and support for QuickTime VR
. AOL
3.0 for Macintosh used the IE 2.1 rendering engine in its built-in web browser. The various 16 and 32 bit versions largely depended on the OS although Windows NT would use the 16 bit versions for Windows 3.1.
Web browser
A web browser is a software application for retrieving, presenting, and traversing information resources on the World Wide Web. An information resource is identified by a Uniform Resource Identifier and may be a web page, image, video, or other piece of content...
released on November 22, 1995 by Microsoft
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...
for Windows 95
Windows 95
Windows 95 is a consumer-oriented graphical user interface-based operating system. It was released on August 24, 1995 by Microsoft, and was a significant progression from the company's previous Windows products...
and Windows NT
Windows NT
Windows NT is a family of operating systems produced by Microsoft, the first version of which was released in July 1993. It was a powerful high-level-language-based, processor-independent, multiprocessing, multiuser operating system with features comparable to Unix. It was intended to complement...
and in April 1996 for Apple Macintosh and Windows 3.1
Windows 3.1x
Windows 3.1x is a series of 16-bit operating systems produced by Microsoft for use on personal computers. The series began with Windows 3.1, which was first sold during March 1992 as a successor to Windows 3.0...
.
Version 2 launched with twelve languages including English but this expanded to 24 for Windows 95, 20 for Windows 3.1, and 9 for the Macintosh by April 1996. It lacked many features that became common in later IE versions, including the Blue 'e' logo, integration with Windows Explorer
Windows Explorer
This article is about the Windows file system browser. For the similarly named web browser, see Internet ExplorerWindows Explorer is a file manager application that is included with releases of the Microsoft Windows operating system from Windows 95 onwards. It provides a graphical user interface...
, and bundled programs. Its market share was also much lower than later versions. During its tenure, IE market share only went up to about roughly 3-9% by mid 1996, before IE3 came out.
Internet Explorer 2 is no longer available for download from Microsoft. However, the archive 32-bit version is publicly available on the Evolt.org browser archive.
History
IE replicated many of the quirks of Netscape NavigatorNetscape Navigator
Netscape Navigator was a proprietary web browser that was popular in the 1990s. It was the flagship product of the Netscape Communications Corporation and the dominant web browser in terms of usage share, although by 2002 its usage had almost disappeared...
, and allowed importing bookmarks from it. In May 1996 FTP Software
FTP Software
FTP Software was a software company incorporated in 1986 by James van Bokkelen, John Romkey , Nancy Connor, Roxanne van Bokkelen , Dave Bridgham and several other founding shareholders. It was the first of many companies to name themselves after an Internet protocol...
announced it was providing Microsoft with various technology for Internet Explorer
Internet Explorer
Windows Internet Explorer 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 was first released as part of the add-on package Plus! for Windows 95 that year...
2.0 for Windows 3.1, including a PPP network, 16-bit email client, and other technology.
Availability
Internet Explorer version 2 was released in beta in October 1995, only 2 months after version 1 came out in Microsoft Plus!Microsoft Plus!
Microsoft Plus! was a commercial operating system enhancement product by Microsoft. The last edition is the Plus! SuperPack, which includes an assortment of screensavers, themes, and games, as well as multimedia applications...
for 95 that August. It was released for Windows 95 and Windows NT 3.5
Windows NT 3.5
Windows NT 3.5 is the second release of the Microsoft Windows NT operating system. It was released on 21 September 1994.One of the primary goals during Windows NT 3.5's development was to increase the speed of the operating system; as a result, the project was given the codename "Daytona" in...
in November 1995 and was bundled with NT 4.0
Windows NT 4.0
Windows NT 4.0 is a preemptive, graphical and business-oriented operating system designed to work with either uniprocessor or symmetric multi-processor computers. It was the next release of Microsoft's Windows NT line of operating systems and was released to manufacturing on 31 July 1996...
in July 1996. The Beta for Mac on PowerPC
PowerPC
PowerPC is a RISC architecture created by the 1991 Apple–IBM–Motorola alliance, known as AIM...
came out in January, and the finalized version in April for 68k
68k
The Motorola 680x0/m68000/68000 is a family of 32-bit CISC microprocessors. During the 1980s and early 1990s, they were popular in personal computers and workstations and were the primary competitors of Intel's x86 microprocessors...
and PowerPC. Version 2 was also the first release for Windows 3.1 and Macintosh System 7.0.1
System 7
System 7 is the name of a Macintosh operating system introduced in 1991.System 7 may also refer to:* System 7 , a British dance/ambient band* System 7 , 1991 album* IBM System/7, a 1970s computer system...
(PPC or 68k), although the Mac version was not released until January 1996 for PPC, and April for 68k. Version 2 was included in Windows 95 OEM
Original Equipment Manufacturer
An original equipment manufacturer, or OEM, manufactures products or components that are purchased by a company and retailed under that purchasing company's brand name. OEM refers to the company that originally manufactured the product. When referring to automotive parts, OEM designates a...
Service Release (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-sets
DBCS
A double-byte character set is a character set that represents each character with 2 bytes. The DBCS supports national languages that contain a large number of unique characters or symbols...
for supporting Japanese, Korean, Polish or Russian characters in web pages. Version 2.1 for the Mac came out in August 1996, the same month version 2 for Windows was superseded by Microsoft Internet Explorer 3
Internet Explorer 3
Microsoft Internet Explorer 3 is a graphical web browser released on August 13, 1996 by Microsoft for Microsoft Windows and on January 8, 1997 for Apple Mac OS . It began serious competition against Netscape Navigator in the first Browser war...
, which was heavily changed from version 2. There were 16-bit
16-bit application
A 16 bit application is any software written for MS-DOS, OS/2 1.x or early versions of Microsoft Windows which originally ran on the 16-bit Intel 8088 and Intel 80286 microprocessors. Such applications used a 20-bit or 24-bit segment or selector-offset address representation to extend the range of...
and 32-bit
32-bit application
On the x86 architecture, a 32-bit application normally means software that typically uses the 32-bit linear address space possible with the 80386 and later chips...
versions depending on the OS.
Mac version
The Mac version, especially version 2.1, was praised for being economic with resources and for new features. Internet Explorer supported the embedding of a number of multimedia formats into web pages, including AVIAudio Video Interleave
Audio Video Interleave , known by its acronym AVI, is a multimedia container format introduced by Microsoft in November 1992 as part of its Video for Windows technology. AVI files can contain both audio and video data in a file container that allows synchronous audio-with-video playback...
and QuickTime
QuickTime
QuickTime is an extensible proprietary multimedia framework developed by Apple Inc., capable of handling various formats of digital video, picture, sound, panoramic images, and interactivity. The classic version of QuickTime is available for Windows XP and later, as well as Mac OS X Leopard and...
formatted video and AIFF
AIFF
Audio Interchange File Format is an audio file format standard used for storing sound data for personal computers and other electronic audio devices...
, Midi and WAV
WAV
Waveform Audio File Format , is a Microsoft and IBM audio file format standard for storing an audio bitstream on PCs...
formatted audio. The non-beta final version was released three months later on April 23, 1996. Version 2.1 fixed bugs and improving stability, but also added a few features such as support for the NPAPI
NPAPI
Netscape Plugin Application Programming Interface is a cross-platform plugin architecture used by many web browsers.It was first developed for the Netscape family of browsers starting with Netscape Navigator 2.0 but was subsequently implemented by many other browsers, including all of the browsers...
(the first version of Internet Explorer on any platform to do so) and support for QuickTime VR
QuickTime VR
QuickTime VR is a type of image file format developed by Apple Inc. for QuickTime. It allows the creation and viewing of photographically-captured panoramas and the exploration of objects through images taken at multiple viewing angles...
. AOL
AOL
AOL Inc. is an American global Internet services and media company. AOL is headquartered at 770 Broadway in New York. Founded in 1983 as Control Video Corporation, it has franchised its services to companies in several nations around the world or set up international versions of its services...
3.0 for Macintosh used the IE 2.1 rendering engine in its built-in web browser. The various 16 and 32 bit versions largely depended on the OS although Windows NT would use the 16 bit versions for Windows 3.1.
Features
IE2 introduced new or improved features for its time period. Many soon became ubiquitous (such as cookies) while other features became obsolete.- Secure Socket Layer (SSL) protocol
- HTTP cookies
- Virtual Reality Modeling Language (VRML)
- integrated email and news client
- SMTPSimple Mail Transfer ProtocolSimple Mail Transfer Protocol is an Internet standard for electronic mail transmission across Internet Protocol networks. SMTP was first defined by RFC 821 , and last updated by RFC 5321 which includes the extended SMTP additions, and is the protocol in widespread use today...
and POPPost Office ProtocolIn computing, the Post Office Protocol is an application-layer Internet standard protocol used by local e-mail clients to retrieve e-mail from a remote server over a TCP/IP connection. POP and IMAP are the two most prevalent Internet standard protocols for e-mail retrieval. Virtually all modern...
support - Newsgroups (NNTPNetwork News Transfer ProtocolThe Network News Transfer Protocol is an Internet application protocol used for transporting Usenet news articles between news servers and for reading and posting articles by end user client applications...
) - spell checkerSpell checkerIn computing, a spell checker is an application program that flags words in a document that may not be spelled correctly. Spell checkers may be stand-alone capable of operating on a block of text, or as part of a larger application, such as a word processor, email client, electronic dictionary,...
- automatic mail management (filter)
- MIMEMIMEMultipurpose Internet Mail Extensions is an Internet standard that extends the format of email to support:* Text in character sets other than ASCII* Non-text attachments* Message bodies with multiple parts...
- MAPIMessaging Application Programming InterfaceMessaging Application Programming Interface is a messaging architecture and a Component Object Model based API for Microsoft Windows. MAPI allows client programmes to become messaging-enabled, -aware, or -based by calling MAPI subsystem routines that interface with certain messaging servers...
- SMTP
- JavaScriptJavaScriptJavaScript is a prototype-based scripting language that is dynamic, weakly typed and has first-class functions. It is a multi-paradigm language, supporting object-oriented, imperative, and functional programming styles....
support - HTML3
- HTML tables
- HTML Frames element support
- nonstandard-tags as background-sounds (bgsound), text-font-tag
- RSA
- PPPPoint-to-Point ProtocolIn networking, the Point-to-Point Protocol is a data link protocol commonly used in establishing a direct connection between two networking nodes...
network stackProtocol stackThe protocol stack is an implementation of a computer networking protocol suite. The terms are often used interchangeably. Strictly speaking, the suite is the definition of the protocols, and the stack is the software implementation of them.... - through Object Linking and EmbeddingObject Linking and EmbeddingObject Linking and Embedding is a technology developed by Microsoft that allows embedding and linking to documents and other objects. For developers, it brought OLE Control eXtension , a way to develop and use custom user interface elements...
-technologie support for Drag-and-dropDrag-and-dropIn computer graphical user interfaces, drag-and-drop is the action of selecting a virtual object by "grabbing" it and dragging it to a different location or onto another virtual object... - Bookmark-importer for Netscape
Windows
| Major version | Minor version | Release date | Significant changes | Shipped with |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Version 2 | 2.0 Beta | October 1995 | Support of HTML tables and other elements. | |
| 2.0 | November 22, 1995 | SSL, cookies, VRML, and Internet newsgroups. | Windows NT 4.0 Windows NT 4.0 Windows NT 4.0 is a preemptive, graphical and business-oriented operating system designed to work with either uniprocessor or symmetric multi-processor computers. It was the next release of Microsoft's Windows NT line of operating systems and was released to manufacturing on 31 July 1996... Windows 95 OSR1 Internet Starter Kit |
|
| 2.01 | Bug fix release. | |||
Mac
| Major version | Minor version | Release date | Significant changes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Version 2 | 2.0 Beta | January 23, 1996 | Beta for PPC only |
| 2.0 | April 23, 1996 | PPC and 68k Supported | |
| 2.1 | August 1996 | Bug fixes; NPAPI NPAPI Netscape Plugin Application Programming Interface is a cross-platform plugin architecture used by many web browsers.It was first developed for the Netscape family of browsers starting with Netscape Navigator 2.0 but was subsequently implemented by many other browsers, including all of the browsers... support |
External links
- Internet Explorer 2 Emulator, Deja Vu
- Internet Explorer Architecture
- Internet Explorer Community — The official Microsoft Internet Explorer Community
- MSDN Introduction to Active Channel Technology