Internet Explorer 3 - Overview

Overview

Internet Explorer 3.0 was released free of charge in August 1996 by bundling it with Windows 95 OSR2, another OEM release. Microsoft thus made no direct revenues on IE and was liable to pay Spyglass only the minimum quarterly fee. In 1997, Spyglass threatened Microsoft with a contractual audit, in response to which Microsoft settled for $8 million U.S. Version 3 included Internet Mail and News 1.0 and the Windows Address Book. It also brought the browser much closer to the bar that had been set by Netscape, including the support of Netscape's plugins technology (NPAPI), ActiveX, frames, and a reverse-engineered version of JavaScript named JScript. Later, Microsoft NetMeeting and Windows Media Player were integrated into the product and thus helper applications became not as necessary as they once were. CSS were also introduced with version 3 of Internet Explorer. While IE1 and IE2 were said have "paled" in comparison to Netscape, IE3 "delivers a crushing blow to Netscape". The user interface notably changes, with much larger buttons, with more intricate icons, and with a light gray design behind it. Unlike later IE versions, users who upgraded to IE3 could still use the last IE by converting the previous version to a separate directory. It also could import favorites into IE3 from IE1 or 2. The competition between Netscape and Microsoft heated up, with some saying the Internet community "became polarized on the issue of which web browser had the most features." Other new features included ActiveMovie multimedia API, HTML Layout Control, Quick Links toolbar, VRML.

Microsoft announced on July 29, 1996 that it would develop a native version of IE for "Solaris and other popular variants of UNIX" to be available "by the end of 1996" which would have "equivalent functionality as that provided in Microsoft Internet Explorer 3.0", thus "delivering on its commitment to provide full-featured Web browser support on all major operating system platforms" as well as "supporting and promoting open standards, including HTML, ActiveX and Java". In March, 1997 following a dispute which "arose between Microsoft and Bristol concerning each other’s performance of the 1996 IE Agreement" and likely also because of contract negotiations with Bristol to access Windows source code after September 1997 failing, Microsoft reversed course and decided to directly port the Windows version in-house using the MainWin XDE (eXtended Development Environment) application from Mainsoft, the main competitor to Bristol Technology. (Microsoft would later also use MainWin to port Windows Media Player and Outlook Express to Unix.) Now well behind schedule, the 3.0 branch was apparently scrapped in favor of 4.0 (that was released for Windows half a year earlier), which used the new Trident rendering engine. A Internet Explorer 4 Beta for Solaris was released by the end of 1997, leading to Internet Explorer for UNIX versions, which lasted until Internet Explorer 5.

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.