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Windows Internet Explorer
Windows Internet Explorer (formerly Microsoft Internet Explorer abbreviated MSIE), commonly abbreviated to IE, is a series of proprietary graphical web browsers developed by Microsoft and included as part of the Microsoft Windows line of operating systems starting in 1995. The current version of Internet Explorer is 8.0.
MSRP $0.00
Release date January, 1995
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Pros & Cons29
Reviews52
Details
Buy It
Competitors5
Related1
Gallery1
Pros & Cons
13 positive
6 mixed
28 negative
How is the ProSCORE calculated?
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The ProSCORE is calculated based on the ratio of Pros & Cons about this product as voted by
approved reviewers from the ProductWiki community.
ProSCORE = 100 x (Pro votes) / [(Pro votes) + (Con votes)]
Numbers used for this ProSCORE:
Pro votes = 76
Con votes = 171
Total votes = 247
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Details
After the first release for Windows 95, additional versions of Internet Explorer were developed for other operating systems: Internet Explorer for Mac and Internet Explorer for UNIX (the latter for use through the X Window System on Solaris and HP-UX). Only the Windows version remains in active development; the Mac OS X and UNIX version are no longer supported.
It has been the most widely used web browser since 1999, peaking at nearly 90% market share with IE6 in the early 2000s—corresponding to over 900 million users worldwide by 2006.
Though released in 1995 as part of the initial OEM release of Windows 95, Internet Explorer was not included in the first retail, or shrink-wrap, release of Windows 95. The most recent release is version 7.0, which is available as a free update for Windows XP with Service Pack 2, and Windows Server 2003 with Service Pack 1 or later, and is included with Windows Vista. Versions of Internet Explorer prior to 6.0 SP2 are also available as a separate download for versions of Windows prior to Windows XP. An embedded OEM version called Internet Explorer for Windows CE (IE CE) is also available for WinCE based platforms and is currently based on IE6. Another Windows CE/ Windows Mobile browser known as Internet Explorer Mobile is from a different codebase and should not be confused with desktop versions of the browser.
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This report was started
November 14, 2007 at 8:29 pm by
Jan
with the last edit occurring
Friday, 8:18 AM by
Fugazi
This page has been viewed
1490 times,
with
518 edits by
64 contributors.
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full report history »
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Competitors
Windows Internet Explorer is ranked 6th among it's competitors.
See the
top picks in
Internet Browsers »
MSRP $0.00
Released November, 2004
Pros
- Extensive functional add-ons (extensions) and plug-ins
- Tabbed browsing
- After a crash can "Restore session" which reopens all tabs
Cons
- Websites designed with proprietary IE/Active X code may not render correctly
- Windows returns an error if you close Firefox and try to start it up right away "Firefox is still running"
- Firefox V2 crashes semi-regularly and uses a lot of computing resources
Windows Internet Explorer
12%
vs.
Mozilla Firefox
88%
MSRP $0.00
Released September, 2008
Pros
- Extremely fast web-browsing
- Very clean interface
- Very fast startup time
Cons
- No addons yet
- Location bar isn't as intelligent as Firefox awesome bar
- Installation is a little weird
Windows Internet Explorer
13%
vs.
Google Chrome
87%
MSRP $0.00
Released January, 1996
Pros
- Fast rendering
- Download manager
- "Speed dial" favourite page thumbnails
Cons
- Not supported by all sites
- lacks Firefox's extension pool
- No support for tree-style tabs list
Windows Internet Explorer
25%
vs.
Opera
75%
MSRP $0.00
Released January, 2003
Pros
- Text boxes can be resized
- Very cool find interface
- Open source rendering engine shared with Google Chrome
Cons
- Firefox has better/more extensions
- Can't press "/" to bring up find
- No native Linux support
Windows Internet Explorer
63%
vs.
Safari
37%
MSRP $0.00
Released September, 2008
Pros
- Extremely fast web-browsing
- Very clean interface
- Very fast startup time
- Open-source
Cons
- No addons yet
- not avaliable on Linux
Windows Internet Explorer
vs.
SRWare Iron
Reviews
June 13, 2009
approved
reviewer

have it
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
Pros
Did not agree with any pros
Cons
- third-party extension support
- Violates web standards.
- Poor security allows malware and viruses to easily install from infected websites.
- toolbar
- in page search features
- Reviewed User Interface of Version 7 is flawed. Violates current paradigms & harder to use than previous versions
- requires Microsoft Windows
- extremely poor performance on the ACID tests
- painfully slow compared to Safari and Chrome
- slow compared to firefox
Did you find this review helpful?
Yes
/
No
April 30, 2009
approved
reviewer
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
Pros
- Tabbed browsing
- Uses less resources than Firefox
- IE8 has built in developer tools that is comparable to Firebug
- IE 8 has improved performance
Cons
- third-party extension support
- toolbar
- in page search features
- requires Microsoft Windows
Did you find this review helpful?
Yes
/
No
January 11, 2009
approved
reviewer

have it
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
Cons
- third-party extension support
- Violates web standards.
- Poor security allows malware and viruses to easily install from infected websites.
- toolbar
- in page search features
- Reviewed User Interface of Version 7 is flawed. Violates current paradigms & harder to use than previous versions
Did you find this review helpful?
Yes
/
No
January 4, 2009
approved
reviewer
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
Pros
Did not agree with any pros
Cons
- third-party extension support
- Violates web standards.
- Poor security allows malware and viruses to easily install from infected websites.
- toolbar
- in page search features
- Reviewed User Interface of Version 7 is flawed. Violates current paradigms & harder to use than previous versions
- requires Microsoft Windows
Competitors
lonehunter prefers
Windows Internet Explorer over
Opera
Did you find this review helpful?
Yes
/
No
December 29, 2008
approved
reviewer
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
Pros
Did not agree with any pros
Cons
- third-party extension support
- Violates web standards.
- Poor security allows malware and viruses to easily install from infected websites.
- toolbar
- in page search features
- Reviewed User Interface of Version 7 is flawed. Violates current paradigms & harder to use than previous versions
- requires Microsoft Windows
Did you find this review helpful?
Yes
/
No
May 27, 2008
approved
reviewer
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
Pros
- Tabbed browsing
- Nice tab gallery browsing
Cons
- third-party extension support
- toolbar
- in page search features
- Reviewed User Interface of Version 7 is flawed. Violates current paradigms & harder to use than previous versions
- requires Microsoft Windows
Comments
Did you find this review helpful?
Yes
/
No
May 25, 2008
approved
reviewer

love it
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
Pros
- Tabbed browsing
- Nice tab gallery browsing
- IE 7 runs very fast
Cons
- third-party extension support
- in page search features
- Reviewed User Interface of Version 7 is flawed. Violates current paradigms & harder to use than previous versions
Did you find this review helpful?
Yes
/
No

have it
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
Pros
Did not agree with any pros
Cons
- third-party extension support
- Violates web standards.
- Poor security allows malware and viruses to easily install from infected websites.
- toolbar
- in page search features
- Reviewed User Interface of Version 7 is flawed. Violates current paradigms & harder to use than previous versions
- security
Did you find this review helpful?
Yes
/
No
Friday, 8:18 AM
approved
reviewer

have it
Pros
- Tabbed browsing
- Has Phising protection out-of-the-box
- InPrivate: A mode that leaves no history, cookies etc. behind
- useful accelerators that save time
- Version 8 handles web standards a lot better than older versions
- Simple to use
- IE 8 has improved performance
Cons
- Poor security allows malware and viruses to easily install from infected websites.
- extremely poor performance on the ACID tests
- painfully slow compared to Safari and Chrome
- Violates web standards - webdesigners needs to create web pages and separate IE-pages
- Very significant compatibility issues between each major release
- Upgrade from old outdated problematic (and evil) versions is not forced
- Versions older than 8 heavily violate web standards causing a lot of problems for web community
Did you find this review helpful?
Yes
/
No
October 25, 2009
approved
reviewer

have it
Pros
- Tabbed browsing
- Nice tab gallery browsing
- Has Phising protection out-of-the-box
- InPrivate: A mode that leaves no history, cookies etc. behind
- Useful (quick view) url coloring
- Has XSS protection out-of-the-box
- useful accelerators that save time
- Good zooming in of webpages
- Uses less resources than Firefox
- Simple to use
- IE 8 has improved performance
Cons
- third-party extension support
- extremely poor performance on the ACID tests
Did you find this review helpful?
Yes
/
No
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