Microsoft Internet Explorer 4 (IE4) is a graphical web browser that

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washin ...

unveiled in Spring of 1997, and released in September 1997, primarily for Microsoft Windows, but also with versions available for the classic Mac OS, Solaris, and HP-UX and marketed as "The Web the Way You Want It". It was one of the main participants of the first

browser war Browse, browser or browsing may refer to: Programs * Web browser, a program used to access the World Wide Web *Code browser, a program for navigating source code * File browser or file manager, a program used to manage files and related objects * ...

. Its distribution methods and Windows integration were involved in the '' United States v. Microsoft Corp.'' case. It was superseded by Microsoft

Internet Explorer 5 Microsoft Internet Explorer 5 (IE5) is a graphical web browser, the fifth version of Internet Explorer, the successor to Internet Explorer 4 and one of the main participants of the first browser war. Its distribution methods and Windows integrat ...

in March 1999. It was the default browser in

Windows 95 Windows 95 is a consumer-oriented operating system developed by Microsoft as part of its Windows 9x family of operating systems. The first operating system in the 9x family, it is the successor to Windows 3.1x, and was released to manufacturi ...

OSR 2.5 and

Windows 98 Windows 98 is a consumer-oriented operating system developed by Microsoft as part of its Windows 9x family of Microsoft Windows operating systems. The second operating system in the 9x line, it is the successor to Windows 95, and was released to ...

First Edition (later default was

), and can replace previous versions of Internet Explorer on

Windows 3.1x Windows 3.1 is a major release of Microsoft Windows. It was released to manufacturing on April 6, 1992, as a successor to Windows 3.0. Like its predecessors, the Windows 3.1 series ran as a shell on top of MS-DOS. Codenamed Janus, Windows 3 ...

, Windows NT 3.51,

and

Windows NT 4.0 Windows NT 4.0 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft and oriented towards businesses. It is the direct successor to Windows NT 3.51, which was released to manufacturing on July 31, 1996, and then to retail ...

; in addition the Internet Explorer layout engine

MSHTML Trident (also known as MSHTML) is a proprietary browser engine for the Microsoft Windows version of Internet Explorer, developed by Microsoft. MSHTML debuted with the release of Internet Explorer 4 in 1997. For versions 7 and 8 of Internet Expl ...

(Trident) was introduced. It attained just over 60% market share by March 1999 when IE5 was released. In August 2001 when

Internet Explorer 6 Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 (IE6) is a graphical web browser developed by Microsoft for Windows operating systems. Released on August 24, 2001, it is the sixth, and by now discontinued, version of Internet Explorer and the successor to Internet ...

was released, IE4.x had dropped to 7% market share and IE5 had increased to 80%. IE4 market share dropped under 1% by 2004. Internet Explorer 4 is no longer available for download from Microsoft. However, archived versions of the software can be found on various websites.

Overview

The Internet Explorer 4.0 Platform Preview was released in April 1997, and Platform Preview 2.0 in July that year. Internet Explorer 4 was released to the public in September, 1997 and 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 Windows Desktop Update was an optional feature by Microsoft that was included with Internet Explorer 4 (IE4, released in September 1997), which introduced several updated shell features to the Windows 95 and Windows NT 4.0 operating systems. These ...

" 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 Active Desktop was a feature of Microsoft Internet Explorer 4.0's optional Windows Desktop Update that allowed users to add HTML content to the desktop, along with some other features. This function was intended to be installed on the then-curre ...

. The integration with Windows, however, was subject to numerous packaging criticisms (see '' United States v. Microsoft Corp.''). 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 Group Policy is a feature of the Microsoft Windows NT family of operating systems (including Windows 7, Windows 8.1, Windows 10, Windows 11, and Windows Server 2003+) that controls the working environment of user accounts and computer accounts. G ...

, allowing companies to configure and lock down many aspects of the browser's configuration. Internet Mail and News was replaced with

Outlook Express Outlook Express, formerly known as Microsoft Internet Mail and News, is a discontinued email and news client included with Internet Explorer versions 3.0 through to 6.0. As such, it was bundled with several versions of Microsoft Windows, from ...

, and

Microsoft Chat Microsoft Comic Chat (later Microsoft Chat) is a graphical IRC client created by Microsoft, first released with Internet Explorer 3.0 in 1996. Comic Chat was developed by Microsoft Researcher David Kurlander, with Microsoft Research's Virtual ...

and an improved

NetMeeting Microsoft NetMeeting is a discontinued VoIP and multi-point videoconferencing client included in many versions of Microsoft Windows (from Windows 95 OSR2 to Windows Vista). It uses the H.323 protocol for videoconferencing, and is interoperable w ...

were also included. This version also was included with

. Version 4.5 (only for Mac) dropped support for 68k Macs, but offered new features such as easier 128-bit encryption. The last non-Mac version was 4.0 Service Pack 2. Uninstalling IE4 became the subject of concern to some users and was a point of contention in later lawsuits (see

Removal of Internet Explorer The idea of the removal of Internet Explorer (IE) from Windows was proposed during the '' United States v. Microsoft Corp.'' case. Later, security advocates took up the idea as a way to protect Windows systems from attacks via IE vulnerabilities ...

and '' United States v. Microsoft Corp.''.)

Internet Explorer version 4.0 for Macintosh

On January 6, 1998, at the Macworld Expo in

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish for " Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the fourth most populous in California and 17th ...

, Microsoft announced the release of the final version of ''Internet Explorer version 4.0 for Macintosh''. Version 4 includes support for offline browsing,

Dynamic HTML Dynamic HTML, or DHTML, is a term which was used by some browser vendors to describe the combination of HTML, style sheets and client-side scripts (JavaScript, VBScript, or any other supported scripts) that enabled the creation of interactive ...

, a new faster Java virtual machine and Security Zones that allow users or administrators to limit access to certain types of web content depending on which zone (for example Intranet or Internet) the content is coming from. At the same event, Apple announced the release of

Mac OS 8 Mac OS 8 is an operating system that was released by Apple Computer on July 26, 1997. It includes the largest overhaul of the classic Mac OS experience since the release of System 7, approximately six years before. It places a greater emphasis o ...

.1, which would be bundled with IE4. At the following year's San Francisco Macworld Expo on January 9, 1999, Microsoft announced the release of ''Internet Explorer 4.5 Macintosh Edition''. This new version dropped 68K processor support, introduced Form AutoFill, Print Preview, and Page Holder pane, which allowed user to hold a page of links on one side of the screen that opens pages in the right hand and support for Mac OS technology like Sherlock.

Internet Explorer 4 for Unix

On November 5, 1997, a beta of IE for Unix 4.0 was released for testing on Solaris. On January 27, 1998, it was reported that IE 4.0 for Solaris was due in March; Tod Nielsen, general manager of Microsoft's developer relations group, joked that "he wanted to launch Internet Explorer 4.0 for Unix at the Ripley's Believe It or Not!

museum A museum ( ; plural museums or, rarely, musea) is a building or institution that cares for and displays a collection of artifacts and other objects of artistic, cultural, historical, or scientific importance. Many public museums make thes ...

" because of

skepticism Skepticism, also spelled scepticism, is a questioning attitude or doubt toward knowledge claims that are seen as mere belief or dogma. For example, if a person is skeptical about claims made by their government about an ongoing war then the p ...

from those who suspected IE for Unix was

vaporware In the computer industry, vaporware (or vapourware) is a product, typically computer hardware or software, that is announced to the general public but is late or never actually manufactured nor officially cancelled. Use of the word has broade ...

. It was further reported that versions for " HP-UX,

IBM AIX AIX (Advanced Interactive eXecutive, pronounced , "ay-eye-ex") is a series of proprietary Unix operating systems developed and sold by IBM for several of its computer platforms. Background Originally released for the IBM RT PC RISC ...

, and Irix" were planned. The software used to enable this, MainWin XDE, was available for Solaris 2.5.1 on SPARC and Intel, SunOS 4.1.4, Irix 5.3, Irix 6.2, HP UX 10.2, and IBM AIX 4.1.5. On March 4, 1998, IE 4.0 for Unix on Solaris was released. Later that year, a version for HP-UX was released.

Features, technology, and integrated software

IE4 came with

Channels Channel, channels, channeling, etc., may refer to: Geography * Channel (geography), in physical geography, a landform consisting of the outline (banks) of the path of a narrow body of water. Australia * Channel Country, region of outback Austral ...

, Frontpage Express,

Netmeeting Microsoft NetMeeting is a discontinued VoIP and multi-point videoconferencing client included in many versions of Microsoft Windows (from Windows 95 OSR2 to Windows Vista). It uses the H.323 protocol for videoconferencing, and is interoperable w ...

NetShow NetShow was Microsoft's original framework for Internet network broadcasting, intended to compete with RealNetworks RealMedia & Vivo (''acquired in 1998 by RealNetworks''). It was later renamed and marketed under the Windows Media umbrella. NetS ...

, Web Publishing Wizard,

2.0 and Progressive Networks

RealPlayer RealPlayer, formerly RealAudio Player, RealOne Player and RealPlayer G2, is a cross-platform media player app, developed by RealNetworks. The media player is compatible with numerous container file formats of the multimedia realm, including MP3 ...

. Outlook Express 4 replaced

Internet Mail and News Outlook Express, formerly known as Microsoft Internet Mail and News, is a discontinued email and news client included with Internet Explorer versions 3.0 through to 6.0. As such, it was bundled with several versions of Microsoft Windows, from ...

. Other new features including

, inline PNG, Favicons, a parental rating system, and the ability to 'subscribe' to a website in favorites, where it would notify the user of an update. Stephen Reid of

PC Pro ''PC Pro'' is one of several computer magazines published monthly in the United Kingdom by Future plc. Its headquarters is in London. ''PC Pro'' also licenses individual articles (or even the whole magazine) for republication in various countri ...

noted in his review:

Bundled and/or integrated software

2.0 is a simple text chatting program included in the

Windows NT Windows NT is a proprietary graphical operating system produced by Microsoft, the first version of which was released on July 27, 1993. It is a processor-independent, multiprocessing and multi-user operating system. The first version of Win ...

-line of operating system, including Windows NT 3.51,

Windows XP Windows XP is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. It was released to manufacturing on August 24, 2001, and later to retail on October 25, 2001. It is a direct upgrade to its predecessors, Windows 2000 for high-end and ...

and

Windows Server 2003 Windows Server 2003 is the sixth version of Windows Server operating system produced by Microsoft. It is part of the Windows NT family of operating systems and was released to manufacturing on March 28, 2003 and generally available on April 24, 2 ...

. It utilizes NetBIOS session service and

NetDDE In computing, Dynamic Data Exchange (DDE) is a technology for interprocess communication used in early versions of Microsoft Windows and OS/2. DDE allows programs to manipulate objects provided by other programs, and respond to user actions affec ...

. *

4.0 is the successor of

Microsoft Internet Mail and News Outlook Express, formerly known as Microsoft Internet Mail and News, is a discontinued email and news client included with Internet Explorer versions 3.0 through to 6.0. As such, it was bundled with several versions of Microsoft Windows, fro ...

, an early e-mail client add-on for

Internet Explorer 3 Microsoft Internet Explorer 3 (IE3) is a graphical web browser which was announced in March 1996, and was released on August 13, 1996 by Microsoft for Microsoft Windows and on January 8, 1997 for Apple Mac OS (see IE for Mac). It began serious ...

. Internet Mail and News handled only

plain text In computing, plain text is a loose term for data (e.g. file contents) that represent only characters of readable material but not its graphical representation nor other objects (floating-point numbers, images, etc.). It may also include a limit ...

and rich text ( RTF) e-mail, it lacked

HTML email HTML email is the use of a subset of HTML to provide formatting and semantic markup capabilities in email that are not available with plain text: Text can be linked without displaying a URL, or breaking long URLs into multiple pieces. Text is ...

. Despite being versioned 4.0, Outlook Express was at its first iteration. *

is a

VoIP Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), also called IP telephony, is a method and group of technologies for the delivery of voice communications and multimedia sessions over Internet Protocol (IP) networks, such as the Internet. The terms Internet t ...

and multi-point

videoconferencing Videotelephony, also known as videoconferencing and video teleconferencing, is the two-way or multipoint reception and transmission of audio and video signals by people in different locations for real time communication.McGraw-Hill Concise Ency ...

client that uses the H.323 protocol for video and audio conferencing. * FrontPage Express 2.0 was a stripped-down version of

Microsoft FrontPage Microsoft FrontPage (full name Microsoft Office FrontPage) is a discontinued WYSIWYG HTML editor and website administration tool from Microsoft for the Microsoft Windows line of operating systems. It was branded as part of the Microsoft Office sui ...

. It was bundled with Internet Explorer 4, but was also available for free, and could be downloaded from online repositories. * RealPlayer was a streaming media player made by Progressive Networks (later called RealNetworks). The first version of RealPlayer was introduced in April 1995 as RealAudio Player and was one of the first media players capable of streaming media over the

Internet The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, pub ...

Active Desktop

Active Desktop is a feature of

Internet Explorer Internet Explorer (formerly Microsoft Internet Explorer and Windows Internet Explorer, commonly abbreviated IE or MSIE) is a series of graphical web browsers developed by Microsoft which was used in the Windows line of operating systems ( ...

4.0's optional

that allows the user to add

HTML The HyperText Markup Language or HTML is the standard markup language for documents designed to be displayed in a web browser. It can be assisted by technologies such as Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and scripting languages such as JavaSc ...

content to the

desktop A desktop traditionally refers to: * The surface of a desk (often to distinguish office appliances that fit on a desk, such as photocopiers and printers, from larger equipment covering its own area on the floor) Desktop may refer to various compu ...

, along with some other features. This functionality was intended to be installed on the then-current

operating system, and later

. Active Desktop placed a number of "channels" on the user's computer

that provided continually-updated information, such as news headlines and stock quotes, without requiring the user to open a

web browser A web browser is application software for accessing websites. When a user requests a web page from a particular website, the browser retrieves its files from a web server and then displays the page on the user's screen. Browsers are used o ...

Channels

Active Channel is a

website A website (also written as a web site) is a collection of web pages and related content that is identified by a common domain name and published on at least one web server. Examples of notable websites are Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Wi ...

type which allows synchronizing website content and viewing it offline. It makes use of the

Channel Definition Format Channel Definition Format (CDF) was an XML file format formerly used in conjunction with Microsoft's Active Channel, Active Desktop and Smart Offline Favorites technologies. The format was designed to "offer frequently updated collections of info ...

, which is a way of defining a website's content and structure. Each country had different channels, so picking a country during the installation of IE 4 (and therefore

) was important. Channels could be displayed in a Channel Bar and made heavy use of

Windows Desktop Update

Windows Desktop Update was an optional feature included with Internet Explorer 4, which provided several updated

shell Shell may refer to: Architecture and design * Shell (structure), a thin structure ** Concrete shell, a thin shell of concrete, usually with no interior columns or exterior buttresses ** Thin-shell structure Science Biology * Seashell, a hard o ...

features later introduced with the

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems schedule tasks for efficient use of the system and may also i ...

for older versions of Microsoft Windows. The Windows Desktop Update also added the ability to create desk-bands like the quicklaunch bar. It also updated the Windows file manager, explorer.exe (also a shell), to be more modular and extensible.

MSHTML

MSHTML (Trident) was a layout engine introduced with IE4. It was designed as a

software component Component-based software engineering (CBSE), also called component-based development (CBD), is a branch of software engineering that emphasizes the separation of concerns with respect to the wide-ranging functionality available throughout a give ...

to allow software developers to easily add web browsing functionality to their own applications. It presents a COM interface for accessing and editing web pages in any COM-supported environment, like

C++ C++ (pronounced "C plus plus") is a high-level general-purpose programming language created by Danish computer scientist Bjarne Stroustrup as an extension of the C programming language, or "C with Classes". The language has expanded significan ...

and .NET. For instance, the

WebBrowser Trident (also known as MSHTML) is a proprietary browser engine for the Microsoft Windows version of Internet Explorer, developed by Microsoft. MSHTML debuted with the release of Internet Explorer 4 in 1997. For versions 7 and 8 of Internet Expl ...

control can be added to a C++ program and MSHTML can then be used to access the page currently displayed in the web browser and retrieve element values. Events from the WebBrowser control can also be captured. MSHTML functionality becomes available by connecting the file to the software project.

Browser Helper Object

A Browser Helper Object (BHO) is a DLL

module Module, modular and modularity may refer to the concept of modularity. They may also refer to: Computing and engineering * Modular design, the engineering discipline of designing complex devices using separately designed sub-components * Mo ...

designed as a plugin for Internet Explorer 4.0, and provides added functionality. Most BHOs are loaded once by each new instance of Internet Explorer.

System requirements

Adoption capability overview

Internet Explorer 4.0 had support for

, Windows NT 3.51, and

(Service Pack 3 or later). Version 4.0 was included in the first release of Windows 98, although the second edition included IE5. HP-UX, Solaris, and Mac OS were also supported. IE4 supported 68k Macs, although this was dropped in Internet Explorer 4.5.

Windows

For Windows, Initially

or above, 16MB of RAM, 11MB of disk space (minimum for install).

Mac

System Requirements for initial release of 4.0 for Mac: * Macintosh with 68030 or higher processor * System 7.1 or higher * 8 MB of

RAM Ram, ram, or RAM may refer to: Animals * A male sheep * Ram cichlid, a freshwater tropical fish People * Ram (given name) * Ram (surname) * Ram (director) (Ramsubramaniam), an Indian Tamil film director * RAM (musician) (born 1974), Dutch * ...

with

virtual memory In computing, virtual memory, or virtual storage is a memory management technique that provides an "idealized abstraction of the storage resources that are actually available on a given machine" which "creates the illusion to users of a very ...

on (12 MB recommended) * 12 MB of hard disk space for IE4 and 8.5 MB of hard disk space for

Java VM A Java virtual machine (JVM) is a virtual machine that enables a computer to run Java programs as well as programs written in other languages that are also compiled to Java bytecode. The JVM is detailed by a specification that formally describe ...

. * Open Transport 1.1.1 or higher or MacTCP 2.0.6 or, Config PPP or similar PPP connection software (Control Panel) with PPP (Extension). IE 4.5 did not support 68k Macs.

Encryption

Internet Explorer 4 was the first version of the browser to support TLS 1.0. Internet Explorer 4 supported 40-bit and later 128-bit encryption through an add-on, using Server Gated Cryptography (SGC). A 256-bit encryption would not become available in IE for nearly 10 years until the

Windows Vista Windows Vista is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was the direct successor to Windows XP, which was released five years before, at the time being the longest time span between successive releases of ...

version of

Internet Explorer 7 Windows Internet Explorer 7 (IE7) (codenamed Rincon) is a web browser for Windows. It was released by Microsoft on October 18, 2006, as the seventh version of Internet Explorer and the successor to Internet Explorer 6. Internet Explorer 7 is pa ...

. 128-bit encryption was available or included for these versions: * Microsoft Internet Explorer 4.5 for Macintosh * Microsoft Internet Explorer 4.5 128-Bit Edition * Microsoft Internet Explorer 4.01 * Microsoft Internet Explorer 4.0 for Unix * Microsoft Internet Explorer 4.01 Service Pack 2 * Microsoft Internet Explorer 4.0 for Macintosh * Microsoft Internet Explorer 4.0 128-Bit Edition If it is not possible to upgrade to 128-bit, then 40-bit (SGC) is standard.

Versions

Versions overview

Mac OS: * Version 4.0 – January 6, 1998 * Version 4.5 – January 5, 1999

Comparison of features across platforms

References

External links

Internet Explorer Architecture

Internet Explorer Community
— The official Microsoft Internet Explorer Community {{Authority control 1997 software Gopher clients Internet Explorer Discontinued internet suites Macintosh web browsers POSIX web browsers Windows 95 Windows 98 Windows components Windows web browsers