Microsoft Internet Explorer 5 (IE5) is the fifth version of the

Internet Explorer Internet Explorer (formerly Microsoft Internet Explorer and Windows Internet Explorer, commonly abbreviated as IE or MSIE) is a deprecation, retired series of graphical user interface, graphical web browsers developed by Microsoft that were u ...

graphical

web browser A web browser, often shortened to browser, is an application 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 scr ...

, the successor to

Internet Explorer 4 Microsoft Internet Explorer 4 (IE4) is the fourth version of the Internet Explorer graphical web browser that Microsoft unveiled in Spring of 1997, and released on September 22, 1997, primarily for Microsoft Windows, but also with versions availa ...

and one of the main participants of the first

browser war Browse, browser, or browsing may refer to: Computing *Browser service, a feature of Microsoft Windows to browse shared network resources * Code browser, a program for navigating source code * File browser or file manager, a program used to manage ...

. Its distribution methods and Windows integration were involved in the ''

United States v. Microsoft Corp. ''United States of America 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 ...

'' case. Launched on March 18, 1999. Although Internet Explorer 5 ran only on Windows, its siblings Internet Explorer for Mac 5 and Internet Explorer for UNIX 5 supported

Mac OS X macOS, previously OS X and originally Mac OS X, is a Unix, Unix-based operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 2001. It is the current operating system for Apple's Mac (computer), Mac computers. With ...

Solaris Solaris is the Latin word for sun. It 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 ** ''Sol ...

, and

HP-UX HP-UX (from "Hewlett Packard Unix") is a proprietary software, proprietary implementation of the Unix operating system developed by Hewlett Packard Enterprise; current versions support HPE Integrity Servers, based on Intel's Itanium architect ...

. IE5 presided over a large market share increase over

Netscape Navigator The 1990s releases of the Netscape (web browser), Netscape line referred to as Netscape Navigator were a series of now discontinued web browsers. from versions 1 to 4.08. It was the Core product, flagship product of the Netscape, Netscape Comm ...

between 1999 and 2001, and offered many advanced features for its day. In addition, it was compatible with the largest range of OSes of all the IE versions. However, support for many OSes quickly dropped off with later patches, and later Windows versions are not supported, because of inclusion of later IE versions. The 1999 review in ''

PC World ''PC World'' (stylized as PCWorld) is a global computer magazine published monthly by IDG. Since 2013, it has been an online-only publication. It offers advice on various aspects of PCs and related items, the Internet, and other personal tec ...

'' noted, ''"Credit the never-ending game of browser one-upsmanship that Netscape and Microsoft play. The new IE 5 trumps Netscape Communicator with smarter searching and accelerated browsing."'' IE5 attained over 50% market share by early 2000, taking the lead over other browser versions including IE4 and Netscape. 5.x versions attained over 80% market share by the release of IE6 in August 2001. 5.0x and 5.5 were surpassed by Internet Explorer 6.0, dropping it to the second most popular browser, with market share dropping to 34 percent by mid-2003. In addition, Firefox 1.0 had overtaken it in market share by early 2005. Market share of IE5 fell below 1% by the end of 2006, right when

Internet Explorer 7 Windows Internet Explorer 7 (IE7) (codenamed Rincon) is a version of Internet Explorer, a web browser for Windows. It was released by Microsoft on October 18, 2006. It was the first major update to the browser since 2001. It does not support ve ...

was released. Microsoft spent over US$100 million a year in the late 1990s, with over 1000 people working on IE by 1999 during the development of IE5. The rendering behavior of Internet Explorer 5.x lives on in other browsers'

quirks mode In computing, quirks mode is an approach used by web browsers to maintain backward compatibility with web pages designed for old web browsers, instead of strictly complying with web standards in standards mode. This behavior has since been codifie ...

s. Internet Explorer 5 is no longer available for download from Microsoft. It is the last version of Internet Explorer to support

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 run as a shell on top of MS-DOS; it was the last Windows 16 ...

, Windows NT 3.51,

Windows 95 Windows 95 is a consumer-oriented operating system developed by Microsoft and the first of its Windows 9x family of operating systems, released to manufacturing on July 14, 1995, and generally to retail on August 24, 1995. Windows 95 merged ...

and Windows NT 4.0 SP3—SP6.

History

The actual release of Internet Explorer 5 happened in three stages. First, a Developer Preview was released in June 1998 (5.0B1), and then a Public Preview was released in November 1998 (5.0B2). Then in March 1999 the final release was released (5.0). Version 5.01, a bug fix version, was released in December 1999. Internet Explorer 5 Macintosh Edition had been released a few months earlier on March 27, 2000, and was the last version of Internet Explorer to be released on a non-Windows platform. Version 5.5 for Windows was released in June 2000, bundled with 128-bit encryption. It dropped support for several older Windows versions. A 1999 review of IE5 by Paul Thurrott described IE5 in ways such as, ''"Think of IE 5.0 as IE 4.0 done right: All of the rough areas have been smoothed out..", "....comes optionally bundled with a full suite of Internet applications that many people are going to find irresistible.", "IE 5.0 is a world-class suite of Internet applications."'' Microsoft ended all support for Internet Explorer 5.5, including security updates, on December 31, 2005. Microsoft continued to support Internet Explorer 5.01 SP4, according to its Support Lifecycle Policy; however, this support was ended on July 13, 2010.

Overview

Version 5.0, launched on March 18, 1999, and subsequently bundled with Microsoft Office 2000, was a significant release that supported

bi-directional text A bidirectional text contains two text directionalities, right-to-left (RTL) and left-to-right (LTR). It generally involves text containing different types of alphabets, but may also refer to boustrophedon, which is changing text direction in ea ...

ruby character Ruby characters or rubi characters () are small, annotative glosses that are usually placed above or to the right of logographic characters of languages in the East Asian cultural sphere, such as Chinese ''hanzi'', Japanese ''kanji'', and Kor ...

XML Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a markup language and file format for storing, transmitting, and reconstructing data. It defines a set of rules for encoding electronic document, documents in a format that is both human-readable and Machine-r ...

XSLT XSLT (Extensible Stylesheet Language Transformations) is a language originally designed for transforming XML documents into other XML documents, or other formats such as HTML for web pages, plain text, or XSL Formatting Objects. These formats c ...

and the ability to save web pages in

MHTML MHTML, an initialism of "MIME encapsulation of aggregate HTML documents", is a web archiving file format used to combine, in a single computer file, the HTML code and its companion resources (such as images) that are represented by external hyp ...

format. There was enhanced support for CSS Level 1 and 2, and a side bar for web searches was introduced, allowing quick jumps throughout results. However, Internet Explorer 5 incorrectly includes the padding and borders within a specified width or height; this results in a narrower or shorter rendering of a box. The bug was fixed in

Internet Explorer 6 Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 (IE6) is a 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 Explorer ...

when running in standards-compliant mode. With the release of Internet Explorer 5.0, Microsoft released the first version of

XMLHttpRequest XMLHttpRequest (XHR) is an API in the form of a JavaScript object whose methods transmit HTTP requests from a web browser to a web server. The methods allow a browser-based application to send requests to the server after page loading is complet ...

(XHR), giving birth to

Ajax Ajax may refer to: Greek mythology and tragedy * Ajax the Great, a Greek mythological hero, son of King Telamon and Periboea * Ajax the Lesser, a Greek mythological hero, son of Oileus, the king of Locris * Ajax (play), ''Ajax'' (play), by the an ...

(even though the term "Ajax" was not coined until years later.) XMLHttpRequest is an

API An application programming interface (API) is a connection between computers or between computer programs. It is a type of software interface, offering a service to other pieces of software. A document or standard that describes how to build ...

that can be used by

JavaScript JavaScript (), often abbreviated as JS, is a programming language and core technology of the World Wide Web, alongside HTML and CSS. Ninety-nine percent of websites use JavaScript on the client side for webpage behavior. Web browsers have ...

, and other

Web browser A web browser, often shortened to browser, is an application 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 scr ...

scripting language In computing, a script is a relatively short and simple set of instructions that typically automation, automate an otherwise manual process. The act of writing a script is called scripting. A scripting language or script language is a programming ...

s to transfer

and other text data between a page's client side and server side, and was available since the introduction of Internet Explorer 5.0 and is accessible via JScript, VBScript and other scripting languages supported by IE browsers.

Windows Script Host The Microsoft Windows Script Host (WSH) (formerly named Windows Scripting Host) is an automation technology for Microsoft Windows operating systems that provides scripting abilities comparable to batch files, but with a wider range of supported fe ...

was also installed with IE5, although later on viruses and malware would attempt to use this ability as an exploit, which resulted pressure to disable it for security reasons. Smart Offline Favorites feature was added to the

Active Desktop Active Desktop was a feature of Microsoft Internet Explorer 4, Internet Explorer 4.0's optional Windows Desktop Update that allowed users to add Hypertext Markup Language, HTML content to the desktop metaphor, desktop, along with some other featu ...

component introduced in IE4. An " HTML Application" (HTA) is a

Microsoft Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...

application written with

HTML Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) is the standard markup language for documents designed to be displayed in a web browser. It defines the content and structure of web content. It is often assisted by technologies such as Cascading Style Sheets ( ...

and

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 ...

and introduced with IE5. Internet Explorer 5.0 also introduced

favicon A favicon (; short for favorite icon), also known as a shortcut icon, website icon, tab icon, URL icon, or bookmark icon, is a file containing one or more small icons associated with a particular website or web page. A web designer can create s ...

support and

, which provides scripting capabilities comparable to

batch file A batch file is a Scripting language, script file in DOS, OS/2 and Microsoft Windows. It consists of a series of Command (computing), commands to be executed by the command-line interpreter, stored in a plain text file. A batch file may contain a ...

s, but with a greater range of supported features. Because of

, The Active Channels Channel Bar was removed in Internet Explorer 5. Version 5.5 followed in June 2000. First released to developers at the 2000

Professional Developers Conference Microsoft's Professional Developers Conference (PDC) was a series of conferences for software developers; the conference was held infrequently to coincide with beta releases of the Microsoft Windows, Windows operating system, and showcased topic ...

Orlando, Florida Orlando ( ) is a city in and the county seat of Orange County, Florida, United States. The city proper had a population of 307,573 at the 2020 census, making it the fourth-most populous city in Florida behind Jacksonville, Florida, Jacksonville ...

, then made available for download; it focused on improved print preview capabilities, CSS and HTML standards support, and developer APIs. It also includes support for 128-bit encryption. Although it is no longer available for download from Microsoft directly, it can also be installed with MSN Explorer 6.0 as msnsetup_full.exe. The full version of MSN Explorer can be downloaded only if Internet Explorer 5.5 has not yet been installed. The full version will work but a user will need to download it on earlier Windows versions and transfer the setup file to the newer operating system. If a user still want to download it on a newer operating system, the only way is to use an outdated web browser such as Netscape 4.8. Although newer browsers have been released, IE5 rendering mode continues to have an impact, as a 2008 Ars Technica article notes: :IE5.5 (and below) was decidedly nonstandard in its rendering behavior. Hundreds of millions of web pages were written to look "right" in IE5.5's broken rendering. The result was something of a quandary for Microsoft when it came to release IE6. They wanted to improve the standards conformance in IE6, but could not afford to break pages dependent on the older behavior. :The solution was the "doctype switch". The doctype switch allowed IE6 to support both the old IE5.5 behavior—"quirks mode"—and new, more standards-conforming behavior—"standards mode."Unpacking Internet Explorer 8's multiple rendering modes
, Ars Technica.com

''United States v. Microsoft Corp.''

On April 3, 2000, Judge Jackson issued his ''findings of fact'' that Microsoft had abused its monopoly position by attempting to "dissuade Netscape from developing

Navigator A navigator is the person on board a ship or aircraft responsible for its navigation.Grierson, MikeAviation History—Demise of the Flight Navigator FrancoFlyers.org website, October 14, 2008. Retrieved August 31, 2014. The navigator's prim ...

as a platform", that it "withheld crucial technical information", and attempted to reduce Navigator's usage share by "giving Internet Explorer away and rewarding firms that helped build its usage share" and "excluding Navigator from important distribution channels". Jackson also released a ''remedy'' that suggested Microsoft should be broken up into two companies. This remedy was overturned on appeal, amidst charges that Jackson had revealed a bias against Microsoft in communication with reporters. The findings of fact that Microsoft had broken the law, however, were upheld. The

Department of Justice A justice ministry, ministry of justice, or department of justice, is a ministry or other government agency in charge of the administration of justice. The ministry or department is often headed by a minister of justice (minister for justice in a ...

announced on September 6, 2001 that it was no longer seeking to break up Microsoft and would instead seek a lesser antitrust penalty. Several months later the Department of Justice agreed on a settlement agreement with Microsoft.

Major features

IE5 introduced many new or improved features:New Features in Internet Explorer 5
Microsoft Knowledgebase Article Q221787 * Web Page, Complete * Web Archive (MHTML) (only with Microsoft

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 to 6.0. As such, it was bundled with several versions of Microsoft Windows, from Windows ...

5) * Language Encoding (new options such as Install On Demand) * History Explorer Bar (new search and sort options) * Search Explorer Bar (new options for searching) * Favorites (make available offline) *

AutoComplete Autocomplete, or word completion, is a feature in which an application software, application predicts the rest of a word a user is typing. In Android (operating system), Android and iOS smartphones, this is called predictive text. In graphical us ...

Feature * Windows Radio Bar Toolbar * Ability to set a default

HTML Editor An HTML editor is a program used for editing HTML, the markup of a web page. Although the HTML markup in a web page can be controlled with any text editor, specialized HTML editors can offer convenience, added functionality, and organisation. Fo ...

* Internet Explorer Repair Tool * FTP Folders allows browsing of

FTP The File Transfer Protocol (FTP) is a standard communication protocol used for the transfer of computer files from a server to a client on a computer network. FTP is built on a client–server model architecture using separate control and dat ...

and Web-Based Folders from

Windows Explorer File Explorer, previously known as Windows Explorer, is a file manager application and default desktop environment that is included with releases of the Microsoft Windows operating system from Windows 95 onwards. It provides a graphical user i ...

. (see

Shell extension File Explorer, previously known as Windows Explorer, is a file manager application and default desktop environment that is included with releases of the Microsoft Windows operating system from Windows 95 onwards. It provides a graphical user i ...

) * Approved Sites ( PICS not required for listed sites option) *

Hotmail Outlook.com, formerly Hotmail, is a free personal email service offered by Microsoft. It also provides a webmail interface accessible via web browser or mobile apps featuring mail, Calendaring software, calendaring, Address book, contacts, and ...

Integration * There was also a ''Microsoft Internet Explorer 5 Resource Kit'' * ''Compatibility Option'' allowed

to be run side by side with IE 5, although IE 5.5 would be the last version with this feature. *

XMLHTTPRequest XMLHttpRequest (XHR) is an API in the form of a JavaScript object whose methods transmit HTTP requests from a web browser to a web server. The methods allow a browser-based application to send requests to the server after page loading is complet ...

support via

ActiveX ActiveX is a deprecated software framework created by Microsoft that adapts its earlier Component Object Model (COM) and Object Linking and Embedding (OLE) technologies for content downloaded from a network, particularly from the World Wide W ...

, making IE 5 the earliest AJAX-capable browser

Bundled software

IE5 for Windows came with

Windows Media Player Windows Media Player (WMP, officially referred to as Windows Media Player Legacy to retronym, distinguish it from Windows Media Player (2022), the new Windows Media Player introduced with Windows 11) is the first media player (application soft ...

6.0 (with new Real Audio codecs),

NetMeeting Microsoft NetMeeting is a discontinued VoIP and multi-point videoconferencing program offered by Microsoft. NetMeeting allows multiple clients to host and join a call that includes video and audio, text chat, application and desktop sharing, and f ...

2.11, Chat 2.5 and FrontPage Express 2.0. Other optional installs included Offline Browsing Pack, Internet Explorer Core Web Fonts, and Visual Basic Scripting (VBScript) support. Internet Explorer versions 5.0 and 5.5 are no longer available from Microsoft.

System and hardware requirements

Adoption capability overview

IE 5.01 SP2 was the last version to support

and Windows NT 3.51. Support was dropped after that, as well as HP-UX, Solaris, the classic Mac OS, and Mac OS X. IE 5.5 SP2 was the last version to support

and Windows NT 4.0 SP3—SP6. IE5 was not developed for 68k Macs, support for which had been dropped in Internet Explorer 4.5.

Windows software

* Windows 32-bit versions * Windows 16-bit versions * Note: Although NT 3.51 is a 32-bit platform, it must run the 16-bit version of Internet Explorer. * UNIX, including Sun Solaris 2.5.1, Sun Solaris 2.6, and Hewlett Packard HP-UX

PC hardware

* Internet Explorer 5.0 for 32-bit Windows Operating Systems ** Minimum Requirements: 486DX/66 MHz or higher, Windows 95, 12MB RAM, 56MB disk space. ** Download Size: 37 MB ** There was also a 380 KB active installer that only downloaded selected components * Internet Explorer 5.0 for 16-bit Windows Operating Systems ** Minimum Requirements: 486DX or higher, Windows 3.1 or NT 3.5, 12 MB RAM for browser only installation (16 MB RAM if using the Java VM). 30 MB disk space to run setup. ** Download Size: 9.4 MB

Apple Macintosh

Internet Explorer 5 for

Apple Macintosh Mac is a brand of personal computers designed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 1984. The name is short for Macintosh (its official name until 1999), a reference to the McIntosh (apple), McIntosh apple. The current product lineup inclu ...

requirements:IE5 Review
, ''Mac Observer'', March 31, 2000 * PowerPC processor * Mac OS version 7.6.1 or later * 8 MB RAM plus Virtual Memory * 12 MB hard disk space * QuickTime 3.0 or later * Open Transport 1.2 or later

Versions

Early versions of

shipped with

Internet Explorer for Mac Internet Explorer for Mac (also referred to as Internet Explorer for Macintosh, Internet Explorer Macintosh Edition, Internet Explorer:mac or IE:mac) is a discontinued proprietary web browser developed by Microsoft for the Macintosh platform to b ...

v5.1 as the default web browser, only until Mac OS X 10.3, where the default web browser in

Mac OS X Panther Mac OS X Panther (version 10.3) is the fourth major release of macOS, Apple's desktop and server operating system. It followed Mac OS X Jaguar and preceded Mac OS X Tiger. It was released on October 24, 2003, with the retail price of US$12 ...

Safari A safari (; originally ) is an overland journey to observe wildlife, wild animals, especially in East Africa. The so-called big five game, "Big Five" game animals of Africa – lion, African leopard, leopard, rhinoceros, African elephant, elep ...

References

External links

Internet Explorer Architecture

Internet Explorer Community
��The official Microsoft Internet Explorer Community
Internet Explorer History
{{Authority control 1999 software Gopher clients Internet Explorer Discontinued internet suites Macintosh web browsers MacOS web browsers POSIX web browsers Windows components Windows web browsers