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Sunday, January 2, 2011

The Beginning of an Era

In 1995, Microsoft was busily working on a very important project, code-named “Chicago.”  An extension of that project – code-named “O’Hare” after Chicago’s O’Hare Airport – was being developed in tandem.  Microsoft’s intent was to combine the technologies of both projects into a single consumer product.  Toward the end of these projects, Microsoft decided to take the O’Hare technologies, and distribute them as part of a separate add-on pack to the Chicago product.  Chicago, now known as Windows 95, proved to be one of the most successful operating systems to date.  O’Hare, now known as Internet Explorer 1.0, first shipped as an Internet Jumpstart Kit in Microsoft Plus! For Windows 95.
Although Internet Explorer 1.0 integrated nicely with Windows 95, few customers used it, preferring instead to use the highly popular browser from Netscape Development Corporation, or other web browsers such as Mosaic, Lynx and Opera.  Microsoft remained undeterred.  Microsoft’s market research indicated that their customers wanted to use Windows 95 as a universal network client; one that could connect to Windows NT, Novell NetWare, Banyan Vines, and the Internet.
Microsoft made great strides over the next year with version 2.0.  This was Microsoft’s first cross-platform browser, available to both Macintosh and 32-bit Windows users.  Version 2 introduced support for a wide variety of emerging Internet technologies, such as Secure Sockets Layer (SSL), HTTP cookies, RealAudio, Virtual Reality Modeling Language (“VRML”), and support for Internet newsgroups (NNTP).  We’ll discuss these things more in depth in forthcoming chapters.

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