During a keynote speech at COMDEX in 1990, Bill Gates – Chairman and CEO of Microsoft – announced the concept of "Information at Your Fingertips" and gave his vision of the future. He painted a picture of the consequences that desktop computer technology would have in many areas of everyday life. Four years later, Bill Gates gave another COMDEX speech updating his original theme. While he talked about the effects of the recent rapid changes in the technology, there was still no reference to what no doubt will cause the biggest revolution in the IT industry since the PC – the Internet.
It wasn't until December 1995 that Microsoft publicly acknowledged the significance of the Internet and announced an overall Internet strategy. Later, in March 1996, Microsoft delivered a promise to produce a comprehensive set of Internet technologies, products and tools at their Professional Developers Conference.While Microsoft joined the Internet game relatively late, they rapidly gained momentum and have since released an incredible range of innovative Internet products. These products have provided users rich Internet experiences and organizations the mechanisms to develop high impact, secure and mission critical Internet solutions.
One of the most powerful and compelling pieces in the Microsoft Internet jigsaw is Internet Explorer – a Web browser offering users an increasingly sophisticated medium for experiencing the Internet.It wasn't until Internet Explorer 3.0 - Microsoft's first ActiveX compliant browser – that there was serious competition for the market leader Netscape's Navigator. However it caught up very fast. IE3 came with a host of other client Internet applications for communications and collaboration with others. Internet Explorer – version 4.0 (IE4 for short) takes it one step further. Without a doubt, the power of IE4 provides the potential to forever change the direction of Internet development. In this chapter we'll give you a quick introduction, in no particular order, to all of the new technologies that go into making up IE4.
We'll also take a look at the underlying ActiveX technology that provides much of the power in Internet Explorer 4.0, but first we'll begin by looking at what precipitated the need for a new version of the browser.