Windows Internet Explorer , commonly abbreviated to IE, is a series of graphical user interface web browsers developed by Microsoft and included as part of the Microsoft Windows line of operating systems starting in 1995.... 6 (commonly abbreviated to IE6), is a graphical
Graphical user interface
A graphical user interface is a type of user interface which allows people to human-computer interaction such as computers; hand-held devices such as MP3 Players, Portable Media Players or Gaming devices; household appliances and office equipment.... web browser
Web browser
A Web browser is a application software which enables a user to display and interact with text, images, videos, music, games and other information typically located on a Web page at a website on the World Wide Web or a local area network.... developed by Microsoft
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is a multinational corporation computer technology corporation that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of computer software products for computing devices.... and included as part of the Microsoft Windows XP
Windows XP
Windows XP is a line of operating systems produced by Microsoft for use on personal computers, including home and business desktops, laptop, and media centers.... and Windows Server 2003
Windows Server 2003
Windows Server 2003 is a Server operating system produced by Microsoft. Introduced on 24 April 2003 as the successor to Windows 2000 Server, it is considered by Microsoft to be the cornerstone of its Windows Server System line of business server products.... lines of operating system
Operating system
An operating system is an interface between hardware and applications; it is responsible for the management and coordination of activities and the sharing of the limited resources of the computer.... s. It was the most widely used web browser
Usage share of web browsers
Usage share, in web browser statistics, is the percentage of visitors to a group of web sites that use a particular browser. For example, when it is said that Internet Explorer has 67% usage share, it means Internet Explorer is used by 67% of visitors that visit a given set of sites.... during its tenure (surpassing Internet Explorer 5.x
Internet Explorer 5
Microsoft Internet Explorer 5 is a graphical web browser released in March 1999 by Microsoft, primarily for Microsoft Windows, but initially with versions available for Apple Macintosh, Sun Microsystems Solaris , and HP-UX.... ), attaining a peak in usage share during 2002 and 2003 in the high 80s, and together with other versions up to 95% in 2003. It only slowly declined up to 2007, when it lost about half its market share to Windows Internet Explorer 7
Internet Explorer 7
Windows Internet Explorer 7 is a web browser released by Microsoft in October 2006. Internet Explorer 7 is part of a long line of versions of Internet Explorer and was the first major update to the browser in more than 5 years.... and Mozilla Firefox
Mozilla Firefox
Mozilla Firefox is a web browser descended from the Mozilla Application Suite and managed by Mozilla Corporation. Official versions are distributed under the terms of the proprietary EULA.... between late 2006 to 2008.
Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0 was released on August 27, 2001, shortly after Windows XP was finished.
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Windows Internet Explorer , commonly abbreviated to IE, is a series of graphical user interface web browsers developed by Microsoft and included as part of the Microsoft Windows line of operating systems starting in 1995.... 6 (commonly abbreviated to IE6), is a graphical
Graphical user interface
A graphical user interface is a type of user interface which allows people to human-computer interaction such as computers; hand-held devices such as MP3 Players, Portable Media Players or Gaming devices; household appliances and office equipment.... web browser
Web browser
A Web browser is a application software which enables a user to display and interact with text, images, videos, music, games and other information typically located on a Web page at a website on the World Wide Web or a local area network.... developed by Microsoft
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is a multinational corporation computer technology corporation that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of computer software products for computing devices.... and included as part of the Microsoft Windows XP
Windows XP
Windows XP is a line of operating systems produced by Microsoft for use on personal computers, including home and business desktops, laptop, and media centers.... and Windows Server 2003
Windows Server 2003
Windows Server 2003 is a Server operating system produced by Microsoft. Introduced on 24 April 2003 as the successor to Windows 2000 Server, it is considered by Microsoft to be the cornerstone of its Windows Server System line of business server products.... lines of operating system
Operating system
An operating system is an interface between hardware and applications; it is responsible for the management and coordination of activities and the sharing of the limited resources of the computer.... s. It was the most widely used web browser
Usage share of web browsers
Usage share, in web browser statistics, is the percentage of visitors to a group of web sites that use a particular browser. For example, when it is said that Internet Explorer has 67% usage share, it means Internet Explorer is used by 67% of visitors that visit a given set of sites.... during its tenure (surpassing Internet Explorer 5.x
Internet Explorer 5
Microsoft Internet Explorer 5 is a graphical web browser released in March 1999 by Microsoft, primarily for Microsoft Windows, but initially with versions available for Apple Macintosh, Sun Microsystems Solaris , and HP-UX.... ), attaining a peak in usage share during 2002 and 2003 in the high 80s, and together with other versions up to 95% in 2003. It only slowly declined up to 2007, when it lost about half its market share to Windows Internet Explorer 7
Internet Explorer 7
Windows Internet Explorer 7 is a web browser released by Microsoft in October 2006. Internet Explorer 7 is part of a long line of versions of Internet Explorer and was the first major update to the browser in more than 5 years.... and Mozilla Firefox
Mozilla Firefox
Mozilla Firefox is a web browser descended from the Mozilla Application Suite and managed by Mozilla Corporation. Official versions are distributed under the terms of the proprietary EULA.... between late 2006 to 2008.
Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0 was released on August 27, 2001, shortly after Windows XP was finished. It includes DHTML enhancements, content restricted inline frames, and partial support of CSS level 1, DOM
Document Object Model
The Document Object Model is a platform- and programming language-independent standard object model for representing HTML or XML documents as well as an Application Programming Interface for querying, traversing and manipulating such documents.... level 1 and SMIL
Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language
SMIL , the Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language, is a W3C recommendation XML markup language for describing multimedia presentations.... 2.0. The MSXML
MSXML
Microsoft XML Core Services is a set of services that allow applications written in JScript, VBScript, and Microsoft development tools to build Windows-native XML-based applications.... engine was also updated to version 3.0. Other new features included a new version of the Internet Explorer Administration Kit
Internet Explorer Administration Kit
Internet Explorer Administration Kit , was an add-on to Internet Explorer to let an organization customize IE for their needs, released by Microsoft.... (IEAK), Media bar, Windows Messenger
Windows Messenger
Windows Messenger is a Proprietary software instant messaging client by Microsoft that is included in the Windows XP operating system. Designed for use by corporate users as well as home users, it was originally created as a streamlined and integrated version of Windows Live Messenger#MSN Messenger.... integration, fault collection, automatic image resizing, P3P
P3P
The Platform for Privacy Preferences Project, or P3P, is a protocol allowing websites to declare their intended use of information they collect about browsing users.... , and a new look-and-feel that was in line with the "Luna" visual style of Windows XP, when used in Windows XP. XBM image files were no longer supported. In 2002, the Gopher protocol was disabled and support for it was dropped in Internet Explorer 7.
In a May 7, 2003 Microsoft online chat, Brian Countryman, Internet Explorer Program Manager, declared that Internet Explorer would cease to be distributed separately from Windows (IE 6 would be the last standalone version); it would, however, be continued as a part of the evolution of Windows, with updates coming only bundled in Windows upgrades. Thus, Internet Explorer and Windows itself would be kept more in sync. However, after one release in this fashion (IE6 SP2 in Windows XP SP2, in August 2004), Microsoft changed its plan and released Internet Explorer 7 for Windows XP SP2 and Windows Server 2003 SP1 in late 2006.
Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 was the last version of Internet Explorer not to have "Windows" in the tile, with later versions shifting to "Windows Internet Explorer".
Security issues
As of January 10 2009, Secunia reports 142 vulnerabilities in Internet Explorer 6, 22 of which are unpatched, some of which are rated moderately critical in severity.
Although security patches continue to be released for a range of platforms, most recent feature additions and security improvements were released for Windows XP only.
As of June 23 2006, security advisory site Secunia
Secunia
Secunia is a Danish computer security service provider best known for tracking Vulnerability in more than 12,400 pieces of Computer software and operating systems.... counted 20 unpatched security flaws for Internet Explorer 6, many more and older than for any other browser
Comparison of web browsers
The following tables compare general and technical information for a number of web browsers. Please see the individual products' articles for further information.... , even in each individual criticality-level, although some of these flaws only affect Internet Explorer when running on certain versions of Windows or when running in conjunction with certain other applications.
On June 23 2004, an attacker used two previously undiscovered security holes in Internet Explorer to insert spam
E-mail spam
E-mail spam, also known as junk e-mail, is a subset of spam that involves nearly identical messages sent to numerous recipients by e-mail.... -sending software on an unknown number of end-user computers. This malware
Malware
Malware, a portmanteau from the words Malice and Computer software, is software designed to infiltrate or damage a computer system without the owner's informed consent.... became known as Download.ject
Download.ject
In computing, Download.ject is a malware program for Microsoft Windows servers. When installed on an insecure website running on Microsoft Internet Information Services , it appends malicious JavaScript to all pages served by the site.... and it caused users to infect their computers with a back door and key logger
Keystroke logging
Keystroke logging is a method of capturing and recording user keystrokes. The technique and name came from before the era of the graphical user interface; loggers nowadays would expect to capture mouse operations and screenshots.... merely by viewing a web page. Infected sites included several financial sites.
Probably the biggest generic security failing of Internet Explorer (and other web browsers too) is the fact that it runs with the same level of access as the logged in user, rather than adopting the principle of least user access. Consequently any malware executing in the Internet Explorer process
Process (computing)
In computing, a process is an Object of a computer program that is being sequentially executed by a computer system that has the ability to run several computer programs Concurrency .... via a security vulnerability
Vulnerability (computing)
In computer security, the term vulnerability is applied to a weakness in a system which allows an attacker to violate the integrity of that system.... (e.g. Download.ject in the example above) has the same level of access as the user, something that has particular relevance when that user is an Administrator
System administrator
A system administrator, systems administrator, or sysadmin, is a person employed to maintain and operate a computer system and/or computer network.... . Tools such as are able to address this issue by restricting the security token of the Internet Explorer process to that of a limited user. However this added level of security is not installed or available by default, and does not offer a simple way to elevate privileges
Privilege (Computing)
In computing, privilege is defined as the delegation of authority over a computer system. A privilege is a permission to perform an action. Examples of various privileges include the ability to create a file in a directory , or to read or delete a file, access a Computer hardware, or have read or write permission to a Socket#Computer sockets... ad-hoc when required (for example to access Microsoft Update).
Art Manion, a representative of the United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT) noted in a vulnerability report that the design of Internet Explorer 6 Service Pack 1 made it difficult to secure. He stated that:
There are a number of significant vulnerabilities in technologies relating to the IE domain/zone security model, local file system (Local Machine Zone) trust, the Dynamic HTML (DHTML) document object model (in particular, proprietary DHTML features), the HTML Help system, MIME type determination, the graphical user interface (GUI), and ActiveX. … IE is integrated into Windows to such an extent that vulnerabilities in IE frequently provide an attacker significant access to the operating system.
Manion later clarified that most of these concerns were addressed in 2004 with the release of Windows XP Service Pack 2, and other browsers have now begun to suffer the same vulnerabilities he identified in the above CERT report.
Many security analysts attribute Internet Explorer's frequency of exploitation in part to its ubiquity, since its market dominance makes it the most obvious target. However, some critics argue that this is not the full story, noting that Apache HTTP Server
Apache HTTP Server
The Apache HTTP Server, commonly referred to simply as Apache , is a web server notable for playing a key role in the initial growth of the World Wide Web.... , for example, had a much larger market share than Microsoft IIS, yet Apache had traditionally had fewer (and generally less serious) security vulnerabilities than IIS, at the time.
As a result of its many problems, some security experts, including Bruce Schneier
Bruce Schneier
Bruce Schneier is an American cryptographer, computer security specialist, and writer. He is the author of several books on computer security and cryptography, and is the founder and chief technology officer of BT Counterpane, formerly Counterpane Internet Security, Inc.... , recommend that users stop using Internet Explorer for normal browsing, and switch to a different browser instead.
Several notable technology columnists have suggested the same, including the Wall Street Journal's Walt Mossberg, and eWeek's Steven Vaughan-Nichols. On July 6 2004, US-CERT released an exploit report in which the last of seven workarounds was to use a different browser, especially when visiting untrusted sites.
PC World may mean:* PC World , a computer magazine* PC World , a British computer store chain... named Internet Explorer 6 number 8 on their list of the "25 worst tech products of all time".
Usage share, in web browser statistics, is the percentage of visitors to a group of web sites that use a particular browser. For example, when it is said that Internet Explorer has 67% usage share, it means Internet Explorer is used by 67% of visitors that visit a given set of sites.... during its tenure (surpassing Internet Explorer 5.x
Internet Explorer 5
Microsoft Internet Explorer 5 is a graphical web browser released in March 1999 by Microsoft, primarily for Microsoft Windows, but initially with versions available for Apple Macintosh, Sun Microsystems Solaris , and HP-UX.... ), attaining a peak in usage share during 2002 and 2003 in the high 80s, and together with other versions up 95%. It only slowly declined up to 2007, when it lost about half its market share to Windows Internet Explorer 7
Internet Explorer 7
Windows Internet Explorer 7 is a web browser released by Microsoft in October 2006. Internet Explorer 7 is part of a long line of versions of Internet Explorer and was the first major update to the browser in more than 5 years.... and Mozilla Firefox
Mozilla Firefox
Mozilla Firefox is a web browser descended from the Mozilla Application Suite and managed by Mozilla Corporation. Official versions are distributed under the terms of the proprietary EULA.... between late 2006 to 2008.
IE6 remained more popular than its successor in business use for more than a year after IE7 came out. A DailyTech article noted, "A Survey found 55.2% of companies still use IE 6 as of December 2007", while "IE 7 only has a 23.4 percent adoption rate".
IE6 market share was almost 25% for September, 2008
Criticism
A common criticism of Internet Explorer is of the speed at which fixes are released after discovery of the security problems, and in some circumstances, the problems not always being completely fixed.
Microsoft attributes the perceived delays to rigorous testing. A posting to the Internet Explorer team blog on August 17 2004 explained that there are, at minimum, 234 distinct releases of Internet Explorer that Microsoft supports (covering more than two dozen languages, and several different revisions of the operating system and browser level for each language), and that every combination is tested before a patch is released.
PC World is a global computer magazine published monthly by IDG. It offers advice on various aspects of PCs and related items, the Internet, and other personal-technology products and services.... rated Internet Explorer 6 the eighth worst tech product of all time. A certain degree of complacency has been alleged against Microsoft over IE6. With near 90% of the browser market the motive for innovation was not strongly present, resulting in the 6 year time between the IE6's introduction and its replacement with IE7. This fact is one contributing factor for the rapid rise of the open source alternative Mozilla Firefox.
CSS may stand for:... version 2 unlike most browsers which in turn means web developers must use "hacks" or workarounds so IE6 will display web pages correctly.
IE6 does not conform to web standards, making it difficult to support.
IE6 has also been criticized due to its instability. For example, all one must do to cause IE6 to crash is insert this code into a web page:
As of 20th February, 2009, a campaign going on in Norway which is starting to spread to other countries which are trying to do a "spring clean" to make the web get rid of IE6 permanently.
Tabbed browsing
Like its predecessors, IE 6 is a single-window browser. With the download and installation of Yahoo Toolbar (usually bundled with Yahoo Messenger), IE 6 allows tabbed browsing, which is a standard feature on competing browsers such as Firefox. A new-window link still automatically opens up a new window, rather than a new tab, and one has to right-click on that link to instruct it to just open up in a new tab (in Firefox, new-window links usually open up in new tabs).
Security framework
Internet Explorer uses a zone-based security framework, which means that sites are grouped based upon certain conditions. IE allows the restriction of broad areas of functionality, and also allows specific functions to be restricted. The administration of Internet Explorer is accomplished through the Internet Properties control panel. This utility also administers the Internet Explorer framework as it is implemented by other applications.
Patches and updates to the browser are released periodically and made available through Windows Update
Windows Update
Windows Update is a service provided by Microsoft that provides updates for the Microsoft Windows operating system and its installed components.... web site. Windows XP Service Pack 2
Windows XP
Windows XP is a line of operating systems produced by Microsoft for use on personal computers, including home and business desktops, laptop, and media centers.... adds several important security features to Internet Explorer, including a popup blocker and additional security for ActiveX controls. ActiveX support remains in Internet Explorer although access to the "Local Machine Zone" is denied by default since Service Pack 2. However, once an ActiveX control runs and is authorized by the user, it can gain all the privileges of the user, instead of being granted limited privileges as Java
Java (programming language)
Java is a programming language originally developed by James Gosling at Sun Microsystems and released in 1995 as a core component of Sun Microsystems' Java .... or JavaScript
JavaScript
JavaScript is a scripting language widely used for client-side web development. It was the originating Programming language dialect of the ECMAScript standard.... do. This was later solved in the Windows Vista
Windows Vista
Windows Vista is one member in a family of operating systems developed by Microsoft for use on personal computers, including home and business Desktop computer, laptops, Tablet PCs, and media center PCs.... version of IE 7, which supported running the browser in a low-permission mode, making malware unable to run unless expressly granted permission by the user.
Quirks trigger
Version 5.5 was the last to have Compatibility Mode, which allowed Internet Explorer 4
Internet Explorer 4
Microsoft Internet Explorer 4 is a graphical web browser released in September 1997 by Microsoft, primarily for Microsoft Windows, but also with versions available for Apple Macintosh, Solaris , and HP-UX.... to be run side by side with 5.x. With IE6, there was a quirks mode
Quirks mode
Quirks mode refers to a technique used by some web browsers for the sake of maintaining backward compatibility with web pages designed for older browsers, instead of strictly complying with World Wide Web Consortium and Internet Engineering Task Force standards in standards mode.... that could be triggered that caused it to behave like IE 5.5.
Windows NT 4.0 is a Preemption , Graphical user interface and business-oriented operating system designed to work with either uniprocessor or Symmetric multiprocessing computers.... , Windows 98
Windows 98
Windows 98 is a graphical operating system released on 25 June 1998 by Microsoft and the successor to Windows 95. Like its predecessor, it is a hybrid 16-bit application/32-bit application monolithic product based on MS-DOS.... , Windows Me
Windows Me
Windows Millennium Edition, or Windows Me , is a hybrid 16-bit/32-bit graphical operating system released on 14 September 2000 by Microsoft.... , Windows 2000
Windows 2000
Windows 2000 is a line of operating systems produced by Microsoft for use on business desktops, Laptop, and Server . Released on 17 February, 2000, it was the successor to Windows NT 4.0, and is the final release of Microsoft Windows to display the "Windows NT" designation.... , Windows XP
Windows XP
Windows XP is a line of operating systems produced by Microsoft for use on personal computers, including home and business desktops, laptop, and media centers.... and Windows Server 2003
Windows Server 2003
Windows Server 2003 is a Server operating system produced by Microsoft. Introduced on 24 April 2003 as the successor to Windows 2000 Server, it is considered by Microsoft to be the cornerstone of its Windows Server System line of business server products.... . The Service Pack 1 update supports all of these versions, but Security Version 1 is only available as part Windows XP Service Pack 2 and Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1 and later service packs for those versions. Windows Vista
Windows Vista
Windows Vista is one member in a family of operating systems developed by Microsoft for use on personal computers, including home and business Desktop computer, laptops, Tablet PCs, and media center PCs.... and Windows Server 2008 are not supported.
Release history
Major version
Minor version
Release date
Significant changes
Shipped with
Version 6
6.0 Beta 1
March 2001
More CSS changes and bug fixes to be more W3C-compliant.
Windows XP is a line of operating systems produced by Microsoft for use on personal computers, including home and business desktops, laptop, and media centers....
September 9, 2002
Vulnerability patch. Last version supported on Windows NT 4.0, 98, 2000 or Me.
Windows Server 2003 is a Server operating system produced by Microsoft. Introduced on 24 April 2003 as the successor to Windows 2000 Server, it is considered by Microsoft to be the cornerstone of its Windows Server System line of business server products....
Prior to the widespread internetworking that led to the Internet, most communication networks were limited by their nature to only allow communications between the stations on the network, and the prevalent computer networking method was based on the central mainframe computer model....
The following tables compare general and technical information for a number of web browsers. Please see the individual products' articles for further information....
A time line of web browsers from the early 1990s to the present. Prior to browsers, many technologies and systems existed for information viewing and transmission....
