What does IE5 mean in Internet?

Internet Explorer 5

Microsoft Internet Explorer 5 (IE5) is a graphical web browser, the fifth version of Internet Explorer, the successor to Internet Explorer 4 and one of the main participants of the first browser war. Its distribution methods and Windows integration were involved in the United States v. Microsoft Corp. case. Launched on March 18, 1999, it is the default browser in Windows 98 SE, Windows 2000 and Windows ME and can replace previous versions of Internet Explorer on Windows 3.1x, Windows NT 3.x, Windows 95, Windows NT 4.0 and Windows 98 First Edition. Internet Explorer 5 is the last version of Internet Explorer to support Windows 3.1x, Windows NT 3.x, Windows 95 and Windows NT 4.0 versions below SP6a, but above SP2; as the following version, Internet Explorer 6, will only support Windows NT 4.0 SP6a or later. Although Internet Explorer 5 ran only on Windows, its siblings Internet Explorer for Mac 5 and Internet Explorer for UNIX 5 supported Mac OS X, Solaris and HP-UX.IE5 presided over a large market share increase over Netscape Navigator between 1999 and 2001, and offered many advanced features for its day. In addition, it was compatible with the largest range of OSes of all the IE versions. However, support for many OSes quickly dropped off with later patches, and Windows XP and later Windows versions are not supported, because of inclusion of later IE versions. The 1999 review in PC World noted, "Credit the never-ending game of browser one-upsmanship that Netscape and Microsoft play. The new IE 5 trumps Netscape Communicator with smarter searching and accelerated browsing."IE5 attained over 50% market share by early 2000, taking the lead over other browser versions including IE4 and Netscape. 5.x versions attained over 80% market share by the release of IE6 in August 2001. 5.0x and 5.5 were surpassed by Internet Explorer 6.0, dropping it to the second most popular browser, with market share dropping to 34 percent by mid-2003. In addition, Firefox 1.0 had overtaken it in market share by early 2005. Market share of IE5 fell below 1% by the end of 2006, right when Internet Explorer 7 was released Microsoft spent over US$100 million a year in the late 1990s, with over 1000 people working on IE by 1999 during the development of IE5.The rendering behavior of Internet Explorer 5.x lives on in other browsers' quirks modes. Internet Explorer 5 is no longer available for download from Microsoft. However, archived versions of the software can be found on various websites.

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