Org IE — Microsoft Internet Explorer

UNDER CONSTRUCTION SINCE 1999

An independent organization of fans

In loving memory of the browser that brought the world online.

From the Windows 95 Plus! pack to the final farewell on June 15, 2022, Internet Explorer carried billions of first clicks. Org IE exists so that nobody forgets.

Join the Org

Nine seconds of 56k nostalgia, synthesized live in your browser. Lower your volume.

Opening page https://orgie.org/ … Internet

★ This page is best viewed in Internet Explorer at 800×600 ★ Press F5 to refresh your love ★ Every favicon on Earth exists because of IE 5 ★ «Internet Explorer cannot display the webpage» — but we can display our gratitude ★ 1995 – 2022, twenty-seven years of service ★ The e with the ring: still the most recognizable door to the internet ever drawn ★

Why we exist

Everybody jokes about it. We remember it.

It was the door

For most people alive today, the very first web page they ever saw opened inside Internet Explorer. Before tabs, before search boxes, before Wi-Fi: one blue e on the desktop and the whole world behind it.

It built the modern web

AJAX, favicons, innerHTML, iframe, editable pages, the first real CSS: features we use every single day were born in Redmond and shipped inside IE first.

It deserves a proper goodbye

Retired on June 15, 2022 after twenty-seven years. Mocked for a decade, it never stopped opening pages. Org IE is the place where the jokes stop and the gratitude starts.

Eleven versions, one blue e

The timeline of glory

Scroll sideways. Each card is a release that changed how the planet got online.

1995IE 1.0
August 16, 1995. Ships in the Windows 95 Plus! pack, built on licensed Spyglass Mosaic code. The browser wars begin.
1995IE 2.0
November 1995. First version for Windows NT and the first one available for Mac. SSL, cookies, newsgroups.
1996IE 3.0
August 1996. The blue e logo debuts. First major browser with CSS support, plus frames, Java applets and ActiveX.
1997IE 4.0
September 1997. The Trident rendering engine, Dynamic HTML, innerHTML and the Active Desktop. Integrated into Windows.
1999IE 5.0
March 1999. Gives the web XMLHttpRequest, the favicon and AutoComplete. The seed of AJAX and every web app since.
2000IE 5.5
July 2000. Print preview, better CSS, and contentEditable: typing straight into a web page becomes normal.
2001IE 6.0
August 27, 2001. Ships with Windows XP. The most used browser in history, around 95% of the web at its peak.
2006IE 7.0
October 2006. Tabs, an RSS reader, a phishing filter, a search box, PNG alpha transparency. The five-year wait ends.
2009IE 8.0
March 2009. Developer Tools built in, InPrivate browsing, Accelerators, and a compatibility view for the IE 6 web.
2011IE 9.0
March 2011. A new logo, HTML5, SVG, hardware-accelerated graphics and the Chakra JavaScript engine. Fast again.
2012IE 10
October 2012. Launches with Windows 8, touch-first, CSS3 everywhere, no more plug-ins in the modern UI.
2013IE 11
October 2013. WebGL, SPDY, a modern user-agent string. The last of the line, and the one that stayed in service longest.
2022Farewell
June 15, 2022. Retired on Windows 10. On February 14, 2023, an Edge update switches off the last desktop icon. The e sets.

Still running in every browser you own

Things Internet Explorer gave the web

IE 3 · 1996Cascading Style SheetsThe first major browser to implement CSS. Every stylesheet on this page is a descendant.
IE 3 · 1996<iframe>A page inside a page. Embedded maps, videos and payments all started here.
IE 4 · 1997innerHTMLNot a standard for fifteen years, used by everyone from day one, finally standardized in HTML5.
IE 5 · 1999XMLHttpRequestBuilt for Outlook Web Access. Gmail, Google Maps and the term «AJAX» came later. The idea came from IE.
IE 5 · 1999favicon.icoThe little icon next to every site's name in every tab in the world. IE 5 invented it for the Favorites list.
IE 5.5 · 2000contentEditableRich-text editing in the page itself. Every web mail composer and online document editor owes it a drink.
IE 4 · 1997Dynamic HTMLPages that change after they load. It sounds obvious now. In 1997 it was a revolution.
IE 9 · 2011GPU-accelerated renderingIE 9 pushed text, graphics and video to the graphics card. Smooth scrolling became the baseline.

27years of service
1995 → 2022

11major versions
plus the beloved 5.5

~95%of the web at its peak
around 2002–2003

1blue e
recognized everywhere on Earth

Hall of quirks

We loved it, bugs and all.

Every veteran front-end developer has a scar with IE's name on it. We wear them with pride.

The box model

IE 5 counted padding and borders inside the width. The rest of the world disagreed. Twenty years later, box-sizing: border-box is what everybody uses. IE was right.

Conditional comments

<!--[if lt IE 9]>
  <script src="html5shiv.js"></script>
<![endif]-->

A whole dialect of HTML only IE could read. Nothing has ever been more polite than a browser that let you talk to it alone.

hasLayout

A secret internal property that decided whether an element «had layout». Nobody fully understood it. zoom: 1 fixed it. We do not know why. We never will.

filter: progid

filter: progid:DXImageTransform
  .Microsoft.gradient(
  startColorstr='#1ebbee',
  endColorstr='#0b4f9c');

Gradients, shadows and opacity, years before CSS had them. Ugly to write, glorious to see.

«Best viewed in Internet Explorer»

The 88×31 badge of honour that sat at the bottom of a million home pages. Ours is right here, drawn in pure CSS, because of course it is.

Report a problem

Was the page displayed correctly? If not, we have prepared the only appropriate response.

June 15, 2022

The e sets. The web it built keeps running.

Internet Explorer 1995.8.17 – 2022.6.15 «He was a good tool
to download other browsers.»

In Gyeongju, South Korea, a software engineer built a real gravestone for the browser the week it was retired. The epitaph above is his, and it became famous around the world. It is funny. It is also true, and that is the point: the first browser carried everybody to wherever they went next.

Internet Explorer is not entirely gone. Its engine still lives on as IE mode inside Microsoft Edge, which Microsoft has committed to support through at least 2029, so that the banks, hospitals and governments that were built on it keep working.

Rest in pixels, old friend. OrgIE

Membership

Join the Org. No forms, no servers, no cookies.

Type your name. Your membership certificate is generated right here in your browser and never leaves it. Print it, frame it, set it as your wallpaper next to Bliss.

OrgIEInternet Explorer Fan Organization

Certificate of Membership

This certifies that

Your Name

is a lifetime member of Org IE, remembers IE 6.0 fondly, and solemnly promises to never again make fun of the browser that showed them the internet.

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