Microsoft Internet Explorer 4 (IE4) is a graphical web browser that Microsoft unveiled in Spring of 1997, and released in September 1997, primarily for

Microsoft Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...

, but also with versions available for the

classic Mac OS Mac OS (originally System Software; retronym: Classic Mac OS) is the series of operating systems developed for the Macintosh family of personal computers by Apple Computer from 1984 to 2001, starting with System 1 and ending with Mac OS 9. The ...

Solaris Solaris may refer to: Arts and entertainment Literature, television and film * ''Solaris'' (novel), a 1961 science fiction novel by Stanisław Lem ** ''Solaris'' (1968 film), directed by Boris Nirenburg ** ''Solaris'' (1972 film), directed by ...

, and

HP-UX HP-UX (from "Hewlett Packard Unix") is Hewlett Packard Enterprise's proprietary implementation of the Unix operating system, based on Unix System V (initially System III) and first released in 1984. Current versions support HPE Integrity Ser ...

and marketed as "The Web the Way You Want It". It was one of the main participants of the first browser war. Its distribution methods and Windows integration were involved in the ''

United States v. Microsoft Corp. ''United States v. Microsoft Corporation'', 253 F.3d 34 (D.C. Cir. 2001), was a landmark American antitrust law case at the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. The U.S. government accused Microsoft of illegally ...

'' 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 It was superseded by Microsoft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 inte ...

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 manufactu ...

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 ...

First Edition (later default was

), and can replace previous versions of Internet Explorer on Windows 3.1x,

Windows NT 3.51 Windows NT 3.51 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft and oriented towards businesses. It is the third version of Windows NT and was released on May 30, 1995, eight months following the release of Windows NT ...

and Windows NT 4.0; 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 ...

(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 Inter ...

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. T ...

" 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- ...

. The integration with Windows, however, was subject to numerous packaging criticisms (see ''

''). 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. ...

, 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 Wor ...

and an improved NetMeeting were also included. This version also was included with

. Version 4.5 (only for Mac) dropped support for

68k The Motorola 68000 series (also known as 680x0, m68000, m68k, or 68k) is a family of 32-bit complex instruction set computer (CISC) microprocessors. During the 1980s and early 1990s, they were popular in personal computers and workstations and w ...

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 and ''

''.)

Internet Explorer version 4.0 for Macintosh

On January 6, 1998, at the Macworld Expo in

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, 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 List of Ca ...

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

offline browsing An offline reader (sometimes called an offline browser or offline navigator) is computer software that downloads e-mail, newsgroup posts or web pages, making them available when the computer is offline: not connected to a server. Offline readers ...

, Dynamic HTML, a new faster

Java virtual machine 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 describ ...

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 8.1, 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 Beta (, ; uppercase , lowercase , or cursive ; grc, βῆτα, bē̂ta or ell, βήτα, víta) is the second letter of the Greek alphabet. In the system of Greek numerals, it has a value of 2. In Modern Greek, it represents the voiced labi ...

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! ''Ripley's Believe It or Not!'' is an American franchise founded by Robert Ripley, which deals in bizarre events and items so strange and unusual that readers might question the claims. Originally a newspaper panel, the ''Believe It or Not'' fe ...

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 History (derived ) is the systematic study and th ...

" 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 "

, IBM AIX, and

Irix IRIX ( ) is a discontinued operating system developed by Silicon Graphics (SGI) to run on the company's proprietary MIPS workstations and servers. It is based on UNIX System V with BSD extensions. In IRIX, SGI originated the XFS file system ...

" were planned. The software used to enable this, MainWin XDE, was available for Solaris 2.5.1 on SPARC and Intel,

SunOS SunOS is a Unix-branded operating system developed by Sun Microsystems for their workstation and server computer systems. The ''SunOS'' name is usually only used to refer to versions 1.0 to 4.1.4, which were based on BSD, while versions 5.0 ...

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,

Frontpage Express 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 su ...

, Netmeeting, NetShow, Web Publishing Wizard,

2.0 and

Progressive Networks RealNetworks, Inc. is a provider of artificial intelligence and computer vision based products. RealNetworks was a pioneer in Internet streaming software and services. They are based in Seattle, Washington, United States. The company also pro ...

RealPlayer RealPlayer, formerly RealAudio Player, RealOne Player and RealPlayer G2, is a cross-platform media player (software), media player app, developed by RealNetworks. The media player is compatible with numerous container file formats of the multime ...

. Outlook Express 4 replaced Internet Mail and News. Other new features including Dynamic HTML, 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 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 Wi ...

-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 release to manufacturing, released to manufacturing on August 24, 2001, and later to retail on October 25, 2001. It is a direct upgrade to its predecessors, Wind ...

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, ...

. It utilizes NetBIOS session service and NetDDE. *

4.0 is the successor of Microsoft Internet Mail and News, 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 limi ...

and rich text ( RTF) e-mail, it lacked HTML email. Despite being versioned 4.0, Outlook Express was at its first iteration. * NetMeeting 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 Interne ...

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 Encyc ...

client that uses the H.323 protocol for video and audio conferencing. * FrontPage Express 2.0 was a stripped-down version of Microsoft FrontPage. 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 Streaming media is multimedia that is delivered and consumed in a continuous manner from a source, with little or no intermediate storage in network elements. ''Streaming'' refers to the delivery method of content, rather than the content i ...

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 ''internetworking, network of networks'' that consists ...

Active Desktop

Active Desktop is a feature of Microsoft

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

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 JavaScri ...

content to the desktop, 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 desktop 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 on ...

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 Wikip ...

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 ...

, 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 Dynamic HTML.

Windows Desktop Update

Windows Desktop Update was an optional feature included with Internet Explorer 4, which provided several updated shell features later introduced with the

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ef ...

for older versions of

. 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 developer Software development is the process of conceiving, specifying, designing, programming, documenting, testing, and bug fixing involved in creating and maintaining applications, frameworks, or other software components. Software development inv ...

s 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++ 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 Ex ...

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 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 3.1x,

, and Windows NT 4.0 (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

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 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 A hard disk drive (HDD), hard disk, hard drive, or fixed disk is an electro-mechanical data storage device that stores and retrieves digital data using magnetic storage with one or more rigid rapidly rotating platters coated with mag ...

space for IE4 and 8.5 MB of hard disk space for Java VM. *

Open Transport Open Transport was the name given by Apple Inc. to its implementation of the Unix-originated System V STREAMS networking stack. Based on code licensed from Mentat's Portable Streams product, Open Transport was built to provide the classic Mac OS ...

1.1.1 or higher or

MacTCP MacTCP was the standard TCP/IP implementation for the classic Mac OS through version 7.5.1. It was the first application-independent implementation of a TCP stack for a non-Unix platform and predates Winsock by over 5 years. Released in 1988, it is ...

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 par ...

. 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