Windows Internet Explorer (formerly Microsoft Internet Explorer, commonly abbreviated IE or MSIE) is a series of graphical web browsers developed by Microsoft and included as part of the Microsoft Windows line of operating systems, starting in 1995. It was first released as part of the add-on package Plus! for Windows 95 that year. Later versions were available as free downloads, or in service packs, and included in the OEM service releases of Windows 95 and later versions of Windows.
Internet
Explorer is the second most widely used web browser, behind Google
Chrome, which surpassed it in May 2012, attaining a peak of about 95%
usage share during 2002 and 2003 with Internet Explorer 5 and Internet
Explorer 6.
Since its peak of popularity, its usage share has been declining in the
face of renewed competition from other web browsers, and is 34.27% as
of January 2012. It had been slightly higher, 43.55% as of February
2011, just prior to the release of the current version. Microsoft spent
over US$100 million per year on Internet Explorer in the late 1990s, with over 1000 people working on it by 1999.
Since
its first release, Microsoft has added features and technologies such
as basic table display (in version 1.5); XMLHttpRequest (in version 5),
which aids creation of dynamic web pages; and Internationalized Domain
Names (in version 7), which allow Web sites to have native-language
addresses with non-Latin characters. The browser has also received
scrutiny throughout its development for use of third-party technology
(such as the source code of Spyglass Mosaic, used without royalty in
early versions) and security and privacy vulnerabilities, and both the
United States and the European Union have alleged that integration of
Internet Explorer with Windows has been to the detriment of other
browsers.
The
latest stable release is Internet Explorer 9, which is available as a
free update for Windows 7, Windows Vista SP2, Windows Server 2008, and
Windows Server 2008 R2.
Internet Explorer was to be omitted from Windows 7 and Windows Server
2008 R2 in Europe, but Microsoft ultimately included it, with a browser
option screen allowing users to select any of several web browsers
(including Internet Explorer).
Versions
of Internet Explorer for other operating systems have also
been produced, including an embedded OEM version called Pocket Internet
Explorer, later rebranded Internet Explorer Mobile, which is currently
based on Internet Explorer 9 and made for Windows Phone, Windows CE, and
previously, based on Internet Explorer 7 for Windows Mobile. It remains
in development alongside the desktop versions. Internet Explorer for
Mac and Internet Explorer for UNIX (Solaris and HP-UX) have been
discontinued.
Internet
Explorer has been designed to view a broad range of web pages
and provide certain features within the operating system, including
Microsoft Update. During the heyday of the browser wars, Internet
Explorer superseded Netscape only when it caught up technologically to
support the progressive features of the time.
Internet Explorer, using the Trident layout engine:
Supports HTML 4.01, CSS Level 1, XML 1.0, and DOM Level 1, with minor implementation gaps.
Fully
supports XSLT 1.0 as well as an obsolete Microsoft dialect of XSLT
often referred to as WD-xsl, which was loosely based on the December
1998 W3C Working Draft of XSL. Support for XSLT 2.0
lies in the future: semi-official Microsoft bloggers have indicated
that development is underway, but no dates have been announced.
Almost
full conformance to CSS 2.1 has been added in the Internet Explorer 8
release. The trident rendering engine in Internet Explorer 9 in 2011
scores highest in the official W3C conformance test suite for CSS 2.1 of
all major browsers.
Supports
XHTML in Internet Explorer 9 (Trident version 5.0). Prior versions can
render XHTML documents authored with HTML compatibility principles and
served with a
text/html
MIME-type.
Supports a subset of SVG in Internet Explorer 9 (Trident version 5.0), excluding SMIL, SVG fonts and filters.
Internet
Explorer uses DOCTYPE sniffing to choose between standards mode and a
"quirks mode"
in which it deliberately mimicks nonstandard behaviours of old versions
of MSIE for HTML and CSS rendering on screen (Internet Explorer always
uses standards mode for printing). It also provides its own dialect of
ECMAScript called JScript. Internet Explorer had been subjected to
criticism by W3C over its limited support for SVG promoted by W3C.
Internet
Explorer has introduced an array of proprietary extensions
to many of the standards, including HTML, CSS, and the DOM. This has
resulted in a number of web pages that appear broken in
standards-compliant web browsers and has introduced the need for a
"quirks mode" to allow for rendering improper elements meant for
Internet Explorer in these other browsers.
Internet
Explorer has introduced a number of extensions to the DOM
that have been adopted by other browsers. These include the innerHTML
property, which provides access to the HTML string within an element ;
the XMLHttpRequest object, which allows the sending of HTTP request and
receiving of HTTP response, and is essential to the AJAX web programming
technique ; and the designMode attribute of the contentDocument object,
which enables rich text editing of HTML documents . Some of these
functionalities were not possible until the introduction of the W3C DOM
methods. Its Ruby character extension to HTML is also accepted as a
module in W3C XHTML 1.1, though it is not found in all versions of W3C
HTML.
Microsoft
submitted several other features of IE for consideration by
the W3C for standardization. These include the 'behaviour' CSS
property, which connects the HTML elements with JScript behaviours
(known as HTML Components, HTC); HTML+TIME profile, which adds timing
and media synchronization support to HTML documents (similar to the W3C
XHTML+SMIL), and the VML vector graphics file format. However, all were
rejected, at least in their original forms; VML was subsequently
combined with PGML (proposed by Adobe and Sun), resulting in the
W3C-approved SVG format, currently one of the few vector image formats
being used on the web, but which IE did not support until version 9.
Other
non-standard behaviours include: support for vertical text, but
in a syntax different from W3C CSS3 candidate recommendation, support
for a variety of image effects and page transitions, which are not found
in W3C CSS, support for obfuscated script code, in particular
JScript.Encode()
. Support for embedding EOT fonts in web pages.
Internet Explorer uses a zone-based security
framework that groups sites based on certain conditions, including
whether it is an Internet or intranet-based site as well as a
user-editable whitelist. Security restrictions are applied per zone; all
the sites in a zone are subject to the restrictions.
Internet Explorer 6 SP2 onwards uses the Attachment Execution Service of Microsoft Windows
to mark executable files downloaded from the Internet as being
potentially unsafe. Accessing files marked as such will prompt the user
to make an explicit trust decision to execute the file, as executables
originating from the Internet can be potentially unsafe. This helps in
preventing accidental installation of malware.
Internet
Explorer 7 introduced the phishing filter, that restricts access to
phishing sites unless the user overrides the decision. With version 8,
it also blocks access to sites known to host malware. Downloads are also
checked to see if they are known to be malware-infected.
In Windows Vista, Internet Explorer by default runs in what is called Protected Mode,
where the privileges of the browser itself are severely restricted it
cannot make any system-wide changes. One can optionally turn this mode
off but this is not recommended. This also effectively restricts the
privileges of any add-ons. As a result, even if the browser or any
add-on is compromised, the damage the security breach can cause is
limited.
Patches and updates to the browser are released periodically and made
available through the Windows Update service, as well as through Automatic Updates.
Although security patches continue to be released for a range of
platforms, most feature additions and security infrastructure
improvements are only made available on operating systems which are in
Microsoft's mainstream support phase.
On December 16, 2008, Trend Micro
recommended users switch to rival browsers until an emergency IE patch
was released to fix a potential security risk which "could allow outside
users to take control of a person's computer and steal their
passwords". Microsoft representatives countered this recommendation,
claiming that "0.02% of internet sites" were affected by the flaw.
On December 17, 2008, a fix to the security problem above became
available, with the release of the Security Update for Internet Explorer
KB960714, which is available from Microsoft Windows Update's webpage.
Microsoft has said that this update fixes the security risk found by
Trend Micro the previous day.
In
2011, a report from Accuvant lab said Internet Explorer had a very big
improve on security, Google Chrome and Internet Explorer had all 7
security function it should have. But Mozilla Firefox had only 3.
No comments:
Post a Comment