Microsoft's Chrome was the code name for a set of APIs that allowed DirectX to be easily accessed from user-space software, including HTML. Launched with some fanfare in early 1998, Chrome, and the related Chromeffects , was re-positioned several times before being canceled only a few months later in a corporate reorganization. Throughout its brief lifespan, the product was widely derided as an example of Microsoft's embrace, extend and extinguish strategy of ruining standards efforts by adding options that only ran on their platforms.
In May 1997, Microsoft bought pioneering startup Dimension X, developers of several Java-based animation tools including Liquid Motion and Liquid Reality. Looking to make their recently introduced Direct3D more widely available, the Chrome project combined the Dimension X team with many members of the original D3D team. Chrome was originally positioned as a way to easily add 3D effects to all sorts of programs, and described as a "Windows system service" that would be finalized in early 1999. [1] Chrome was the services level of the package, consisting of drivers that talked to D3D, along with a simple viewer application.
Chromeffects was an XML-based wrapper that allowed Chrome to be called from within a web page. [2] Embedding Chromeffects objects in HTML pages could produce rich content in the same way that VML does for 2D artwork. Chrome's project manager, Bob Heddle, claimed that "It is going to propel the industry. We're moving DirectX from programmers to artists." [1] Likewise, Microsoft Liquid Motion was a layer similar to Chromeffects but within Java.
Chromeffects did not support any of the media standards that were being developed at the W3C coincident with its development, including HTML+TIME or the document object model. [3] This led to widespread outcry from the internet community, who saw Chrome as an attempt by Microsoft to inject a powerful proprietary technology into the open standards based web. If uptake of Chromeffects was widespread, this would limit users to Microsoft platforms where the content could be viewed. This led to promises on the part of MS to better interact with these technologies in the future.
Chrome was previewed in July 1998 at that year's SIGGRAPH, with a developer's release following in August. At the time, Chrome demanded relatively hefty machines to run on, a 350 MHz Pentium II or better with an AGP graphics card. Even Microsoft admitted the hardware requirements were steep, according to Brad Chase, Vice President of Windows marketing and developer relations at Microsoft, "The initial PCs that will run the Chrome feature of Windows 98 are going to be 350MHz Pentium boxes. You're not going to be able to have this on a standard Pentium today." [4] However, Microsoft claimed that this standard would be widely met by new machines; the general manager of multimedia at Microsoft, Eric Engstrom, noted "Over next 12 months, our projections show that 55 to 60 million units capable of running Chromeffects will be shipped." [2] In spite of these promises, feedback from the testers was almost universally negative, complaining about poor performance and general bugginess.
In September 1998, Steve Ballmer announced Chromeffects during his keynote speech at Seybold '98. [5] He announced that Chromeffects had been released to hardware manufacturer partners and that they were integrating it with the Windows operating system that they are now shipping on new machines.
Given the almost universal negative press, both from its own developers and the wider community, Microsoft announced that "Based on developer feedback, we are stepping back and redesigning Chromeffects technologies to better meet both our partner and customer needs." [3] Chrome's cancellation was part of a larger reorganization that resulted in dramatic shakeups within Microsoft's multimedia groups. Many of the Chrome staff were merged back into the DirectX team, while Eric Engstrom was moved out of multimedia to the MSN team. Engstrom was in charge of Chrome and the equally "troubled" NetShow streaming media projects. [3] At the time there was also speculation that Chrome was killed in order to avoid further troubles at their ongoing antitrust case, given the outcry from the web community. [3]
Microsoft did deliver on their promise to better track internet standards, releasing Microsoft Vizact which was based on HTML+TIME. Vizact saw little uptake and was discontinued in 2000.
Internet Explorer is a deprecated series of graphical web browsers developed by Microsoft that were used in the Windows line of operating systems. While IE has been discontinued on most Windows editions, it remains supported on certain editions of Windows, such as Windows 10 LTSB/LTSC. Starting in 1995, it was first released as part of the add-on package Plus! for Windows 95 that year. Later versions were available as free downloads or in-service packs and included in the original equipment manufacturer (OEM) service releases of Windows 95 and later versions of Windows. Microsoft spent over US$100 million per year on Internet Explorer in the late 1990s, with over 1,000 people involved in the project by 1999. New feature development for the browser was discontinued in 2016 in favor of its successor, Microsoft Edge.
ActiveX is a deprecated software framework created by Microsoft that adapts its earlier Component Object Model (COM) and Object Linking and Embedding (OLE) technologies for content downloaded from a network, particularly from the World Wide Web. Microsoft introduced ActiveX in 1996. In principle, ActiveX is not dependent on Microsoft Windows operating systems, but in practice, most ActiveX controls only run on Windows. Most also require the client to be running on an x86-based computer because ActiveX controls contain compiled code.
A browser war is competition for dominance in the usage share of web browsers. The "first browser war," (1995-2001) pitted Microsoft's Internet Explorer against Netscape's Navigator. Browser wars continued with the decline of Internet Explorer's market share and the popularity of other browsers including Firefox, Google Chrome, Safari, Microsoft Edge and Opera.
This is a comparison of both historical and current web browsers based on developer, engine, platform(s), releases, license, and cost.
Microsoft developed 11 versions of Internet Explorer for Windows from 1995 to 2013. Microsoft also developed Internet Explorer for Mac, Internet Explorer for UNIX, and Internet Explorer Mobile respectively for Apple Macintosh, Unix, and mobile devices; the first two are discontinued but the latter runs on Windows CE, Windows Mobile, and Windows Phone.
Internet Explorer Mobile is a mobile version of Internet Explorer developed by Microsoft, based on versions of the MSHTML (Trident) layout engine. IE Mobile comes loaded by default with Windows Phone and Windows CE. Later versions of Internet Explorer Mobile are based on the desktop version of Internet Explorer. Older versions however, called Pocket Internet Explorer, are not based on the same layout engine.
Internet Explorer for UNIX is a discontinued version of the Internet Explorer graphical web browser that was available free of charge and produced by Microsoft for use in the X Window System on Solaris or HP-UX. Development ended with a version of Internet Explorer 5 in 2001 and support for it was completely discontinued in 2002.
The World Wide Web is a global information medium which users can access via computers connected to the Internet. The term is often mistakenly used as a synonym for the Internet, but the Web is a service that operates over the Internet, just as email and Usenet do. The history of the Internet and the history of hypertext date back significantly farther than that of the World Wide Web.
Microsoft announced Chromeffects as an add-on for Windows 98 to play 3D graphics and video through a web browser or in separate player software, for ads with flashing text and other animation, or to generate user interface enhancements for Web-based applications.
Microsoft Silverlight is a discontinued application framework designed for writing and running rich web applications, similar to Adobe's runtime, Adobe Flash. A plugin for Silverlight is still available for a very small number of browsers. While early versions of Silverlight focused on streaming media, later versions supported multimedia, graphics, and animation, and gave support to developers for CLI languages and development tools. Silverlight was one of the two application development platforms for Windows Phone, but web pages using Silverlight did not run on the Windows Phone or Windows Mobile versions of Internet Explorer, as there was no Silverlight plugin for Internet Explorer on those platforms.
MIX was a Microsoft conference held annually for Web developers and designers at which Microsoft showcased upcoming web technologies. The conference was held each spring at the Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas. Unlike many of Microsoft's technical conference, MIX has been promoted more heavily to designers by inviting popular speakers from other popular web design conferences, such as SXSW, and has sponsored a CSS design contest each year to promote the conference. Microsoft has also used this conference as an opportunity to promote new web design and development tools such as Silverlight and Microsoft Expression Studio.
Internet Explorer 9 or IE9 is the ninth version of the Internet Explorer web browser for Windows. It was released by Microsoft on March 14, 2011, as the ninth version of Internet Explorer and the successor to Internet Explorer 8. Microsoft released Internet Explorer 9 as a major out-of-band version that was not tied to the release schedule of any particular version of Windows, unlike previous versions. It is the first version of Internet Explorer not to be bundled with a Windows operating system, although some OEMs have installed it with Windows 7 on their PCs. Internet Explorer 9 is the last version that is called Windows Internet Explorer. The software was rebranded simply as Internet Explorer starting in 2012 with the release of Internet Explorer 10.
"Embrace, extend, and extinguish" (EEE), also known as "embrace, extend, and exterminate", is a phrase that the U.S. Department of Justice found that was used internally by Microsoft to describe its strategy for entering product categories involving widely used standards, extending those standards with proprietary capabilities, and then using those differences in order to strongly disadvantage its competitors.
Google Chrome is a cross-platform web browser developed by Google. It was first released in 2008 for Microsoft Windows, built with free software components from Apple WebKit and Mozilla Firefox. Versions were later released for Linux, macOS, iOS, and also for Android, where it is the default browser. The browser is also the main component of ChromeOS, where it serves as the platform for web applications.
ChromeOS, sometimes styled as chromeOS and formerly styled as Chrome OS, is a Linux-based operating system developed and designed by Google. It is derived from the open-source ChromiumOS and uses the Google Chrome web browser as its principal user interface.
WebGL is a JavaScript API for rendering interactive 2D and 3D graphics within any compatible web browser without the use of plug-ins. WebGL is fully integrated with other web standards, allowing GPU-accelerated usage of physics and image processing and effects as part of the web page canvas. WebGL elements can be mixed with other HTML elements and composited with other parts of the page or page background.
The HTML5 specification introduced the video element for the purpose of playing videos, partially replacing the object element. HTML5 video is intended by its creators to become the new standard way to show video on the web, instead of the previous de facto standard of using the proprietary Adobe Flash plugin, though early adoption was hampered by lack of agreement as to which video coding formats and audio coding formats should be supported in web browsers. As of 2020, HTML5 video is the only widely supported video playback technology in modern browsers, with the Flash plugin being phased out.
Blink is a browser engine developed as part of the Chromium project with contributions from Google, Meta, Microsoft, Opera Software, Adobe, Intel, IBM, Samsung, and others. It was first announced in April 2013.
ANGLE is an open source, cross-platform graphics engine abstraction layer developed by Google. ANGLE translates OpenGL ES 2/3 calls to DirectX 9, 11, OpenGL or Vulkan API calls. It's a portable version of OpenGL but with limitations of OpenGL ES standard.
Microsoft Edge is a proprietary, cross-platform web browser created by Microsoft. It was first released in 2015 as part of Windows 10 and Xbox One and later ported to other platforms as a fork of Google's Chromium open-source project: Android and iOS, macOS, older Windows versions, and most recently Linux. It was created as the successor to Internet Explorer (IE).