What is Internet Explorer?

Internet Explorer (IE) is a web browser developed by Microsoft for the Microsoft Windows operating system since 1995.

What is Microsoft Internet Explorer Web Browser?

It is the most used web browser since 1999, with a maximum utilization rate of 95% in 1999 and 2003 versions 5 and 6.

This market share has gradually decreased due to competition from other browsers, especially Mozilla Firefox. Microsoft spent more than $100 million a year in the late 1990s, and more than 1000 people worked in IE in 1999.

Internet Explorer History

The Internet Explorer project was launched in the summer of 1994 by Thomas Reardon and later managed by Benjamin Slivka. Spyglass, one of the first commercial web browsers with official links to the leading NCSA Mosaic browser, used the source code for Mosaic.

In late 1994, Microsoft licensed Spyglass Mosaic for further development, with a quarterly payment plus a percentage of the revenue from software profits.

Although NCSA has a similar name to Mosaic, Spyglass Mosaic used little of the NCSA Mosaic source code.

Internet Explorer was first released in 1995 to be installed as a plugin for Microsoft Plus for Wplugin95.

It will be introduced for free in some OEM versions of Windows 95 later and is included by default in later versions of Windows.

However, allowing the operating system to get the scanner for free led to a lawsuit and subsequent compensation of up to several million dollars soon.

Internet Explorer Features

Internet Explorer is designed to provide certain functionality for a wide variety of web pages and operating systems, including Windows Update.

During the height of the browser war, IE replaced Netscape when they favored supporting the advancing technological features of the time.

Standards Support

   Comparison of Rendering Engines

Using the Trident design engine, IE almost fully supports HTML 4.01, CSS 1.0, and XML 1, and there are small gaps in the content.

It partially supports CSS Level 2 and DOM Level 2, but it has significant flaws in content and compatibility issues. CSS 2.1 support is available in IE8.

It is entirely compatible with XSLT 1.0 and is an old XSLT dialect created by Microsoft, often called WD-XSL.

Support for XSLT 2.0 is foreseen for future versions of Explorer. Microsoft stated that development is ongoing, but dates have not been released.

Explorer is limited in terms of open web standards and is, therefore, to improve support for current standards.

   Extension Rules

IE has introduced a number of custom extensions to many standards, including HTML, CSS, and DOM. This resulted in a number of web pages that could only be viewed correctly with IE.

IE introduced a number of extensions to JavaScript taken by other browsers.

These include innerHTML, which returns the HTML string inside an element, and the XML HTTP Request, which allows the HTTP request to be sent and receive the HTTP response.

Some of these functions are not possible until the introduction of W3C-induced DOM methods.

Other standards Microsoft foresees are vertical text support, but in a syntax different from the W3C recommendation, support for various image effects and script code, and support for JScript Encoding. Support is also provided for embedding EOT fonts on web pages.

   Usability and Accessibility

IE uses the accessibility provided in Windows. IE is an FTP user interface with operations similar to Windows Explorer.

Recent versions block popups and include tabbed browsing.

Tabbed browsing can be added to previous versions by installing the MSN Search Toolbar or Yahoo toolbar. Keyboard shortcuts for IE also make it easy and save time.

   Cache

IE saves temporary Internet files to provide faster access to previously visited pages.

The content is created and indexed in a database file known as Index.dat. Multiple existing files are different content directories, content visited, RSS, Autocomplete, web pages visited, and cookies.

Before IE7, cache cleanup was used to clean the directory, but the files were not removed. This feature was a potential security risk for both individuals and companies.

Starting from IE7, both the file home directory and themselves are removed from the cache when cleaned.

   Group Policies

The Microsoft Explorer browser can be fully configured using Group Policy.

Windows Server domain administrators can apply and implement security features such as file uploads, zone settings, site settings, audit behavior ActiveX, and others, as well as a number of settings that affect the user interface.

Configuration can be created for every user and every machine. Explorer also supports integrated Windows authentication.

Security

IE uses zone and site-group-based security under certain conditions, even if it is a web-based Internet or intranet and an allowed user.

Security restrictions apply for each region; All sites in a region are subject to restrictions.

IE7 includes a phishing filter that restricts access to fraudulent sites unless the user overrides the limitation.

IE8 also blocks access to sites known to store malware. Downloads are also analyzed to see if they are infected.

In Windows Vista, IE is called Protected Mode by default, where Browser privileges themselves are very restricted. You can optionally navigate outside this mode, but it is not recommended.

This also limits the effectiveness of the add-on privileges. As a result, even if the browser or any add-on is compromised, the damage it can cause is limited.

Browser patches and updates are released periodically and are available through Automatic Updates with the Windows Update service.

Although security patches continue to be released regularly for a wide variety of platforms, the latest features and security enhancements are released for Windows XP SP2 and later systems.

Vulnerabilities

IE has been the subject of many vulnerabilities and concerns: most spyware, adware, and computer viruses are transmitted over the Internet, taking advantage of flaws and flaws in IE’s security architecture and sometimes requiring nothing other than viewing a malicious web page to install.

A wide variety of security flaws that affect IE are caused not by the browser itself but by the ActiveX it uses.

Because the plugins have the same privileges as IE, flaws can be as plugin as browser flaws. Other browsers that use NPAPI as the extensibility mechanism also suffer from the same problems.