The Roadmap of Internet Explorer — Historical Archive

Archive note: This article is preserved as a historical overview of Internet Explorer. It should not be read as current browser guidance.

Internet Explorer was one of the defining products of the early consumer web. It evolved from the mid-1990s through IE 11, moving from a bundled Windows browser into a deeply integrated part of the Windows platform and, eventually, a legacy compatibility technology.

Key milestones

• Internet Explorer 1–3: Microsoft’s early entry into the web-browser market during the Windows 95 era.
• IE 4–6: increasingly integrated with Windows, with IE 6 becoming especially long-lived in corporate environments.
• IE 7–9: tabbed browsing, stronger standards support, protected-mode/security improvements, and accelerated graphics arrived across Windows XP/Vista/7 generations.
• IE 10: shipped with Windows 8 and expanded standards and touch-oriented support.
• IE 11: became the final major Internet Explorer release and remained important for legacy enterprise web applications.

Where Internet Explorer stands now

Microsoft ended support for the Internet Explorer 11 desktop application on June 15, 2022 for affected Windows versions. Sites that still depend on legacy IE technologies should use Internet Explorer mode in Microsoft Edge where Microsoft supports that enterprise compatibility path.

That endpoint changes the interpretation of the original “roadmap”: IE is now part of browser history rather than a product awaiting another consumer release.

Official reference

• Microsoft: Internet Explorer help and end-of-support notice: https://support.microsoft.com/products/internet-explorer