WINDOWS 95 - Microsoft Internet Explorer Web Browser

[tdowling at lib.washington.edu]

Note from:  slavko at kean.ucs.mun.ca
Thu, 05 Oct 95 07:48:58 PDT----------------------------------------
 % I just took a look at the web browser which comes with the WINDOWS 95
 % Plus pack. As you might expect it comes with next to no documentation
 % on its capabilities. Has anyone evaluted this browser vis a vis its
 % support for HTTP v. 3 and/or Netscape extensions? It has built-in
 % support for REAL AUDIO (Did they buy the company?).
 % 
 % Slavko Manojlovich
 % Memorial University Of Newfoundland

Isn't the browser in the plus pack Internet Explorer 1.x?  If so, a
beta version of 2.0 is available for downloading (check http://www.microsoft.com/).

Microsoft's Internet Explorer has got a number of people in the Web
community muttering "I warned you, but did you listen?  Noooo....". 
I'm not entirely sure if it supports the complete set of Netscape
extensions, but it has gone ahead and added its own extensions.  That
means the web is now trying to support HTML 2.0, HTML 3.0,
Netscape-HTML, and Microsoft-HTML.  MS-HTML extensions include font
specification, inline audio, non-scrolling wallpaper, etc.  Suddenly a
lot of Netscape partisans are crying foul over the abuse of the standards process.

Lest anyone think that Internet Explorer is just a minor player in the
browser biz, here is a summary of the last 50,000 hits on our server
(www.lib.washington.edu), taken from the NCSA httpd agent log:

BROWSER STATISTICS FOR THE LAST 50,000 HITS ON WWW.LIB
Thu Oct  5 07:54:28 PDT 1995


9311 Mozilla/1.1N (Windows; I; 16bit)
3936 Mozilla/1.1N (Macintosh; I; 68K)
3399 Mozilla/1.0N (Windows)
3196 Mozilla/1.2N (Windows; I; 16bit)
2211 NCSA Mosaic(tm) for Windows/Version 2.0 (ALPHA 7)
2196 Mozilla/1.1N (Macintosh; I; PPC)
1449 Microsoft Internet Explorer/4.40.308 (Windows 95)  <---------------
1215 Mozilla/1.22 (Windows; I; 16bit)
1068 Lynx/2.3.7 BETA  libwww/2.14
1025 NCSA Mosaic/2.0.0 Final Beta (Windows x86)
1024 WinMosaic/Version 2.0 (ALPHA 6)
 798 Mozilla/1.2N (Windows; I; 32bit)
 791 Lynx/2.3 BETA  libwww/2.14
 671 IWENG/1.2.000  via proxy gateway  CERN-HTTPD/3.0 libwww/2.17
 649 Mozilla/1.1N (Windows; I; 16bit)  via proxy gateway  CERN-HTTPD/3.0...


The anachronistic presence of Windows Mosaic 2.0a6 and a7 is due to the
fact the we installed those versions on numerous public workstations in
1994 and haven't upgraded them yet.  So basically this shows several
versions of Netscape predominant among our users, then our own locally
installed browsers, and then the Internet Explorer.  Sure, at about 3%
of our hits it isn't dominating anything, but this is a browser that
has only been available a couple of weeks, and which only runs on an OS
that has been publicly available less than two months.  How many of
your users are going to get Win95 and the plus pack for Christmas?  How
many Microsoft ads will they see on TV?  How many of them will buy
computers with Win95 installed and the plus pack thrown in for free
(it's a loss leader anyway).

For me, at least, the choice is clear.  Write to the specs, or write to
one specific browser.  If you do the latter, throw out the window any
hopes of maintaining complete compatibility with other browsers.


Thomas Dowling