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An open encyclopedia of software history
Did you know...
- ...that Windows 95 build 58s includes a hidden tabbed mode in the Cabinet?
- ...that some builds of Windows 98 and Windows 2000 contained a Show Desktop button on the taskbar, which would be scrapped later until Windows 7 build 6568?
- ...that in 1985, Microsoft produced a multitasking MS-DOS that natively supported preemptive multitasking and would later become the base for OS/2?
- ...that the supposed Longhorn sound scheme in fact wasn't included in any Windows build and actually originated from a Samsung OEM theme for Windows XP?
- ...that Reversi in the Windows NT 3.1 April 1991 build displays square pieces, because the code for drawing circles wasn't implemented yet?
- ...that the Start button in Windows 95 build 302 says "Ship It!", as a developer temporarily renamed the button in December 1994 for a joke?
Featured article
Internet Explorer is a web browser designed by Microsoft as its first venture into the web browser market. The initial version of the browser was incarnated from Spyglass Mosaic, which Microsoft licensed for a modest quarterly fee and a share of the non-Windows product revenues. As Microsoft decided to distribute Internet Explorer "free of charge" with their Windows operating system, they were able to avoid most royalties. Due to the browser's inclusion starting from the Windows 9x series and beyond, it sparked a three-year-long antitrust lawsuit that lasted until November 2001. The browser quickly overtook Netscape in the first browser war and retained ~95% of its market share until the early 2000s, when popular alternative browsers such as Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome came to market, sparking the second browser war.
Internet Explorer was notorious for disobeying set web standards by the W3C until version 9, when Microsoft took a new commitment to HTML5 and web standards. Microsoft ceased active development of Internet Explorer after Windows 8.1 was released in 2013, making Internet Explorer 11 the final version of Internet Explorer. It was eventually replaced by Microsoft Edge in 2015.
