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IBM WebExplorer displaying the White House Website
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| Developer(s) | IBM |
|---|---|
| Initial release | November 27, 1995; 28 years ago (1995-11-27) |
| Final release | 1.2 / November 25, 1998; 25 years ago (1998-11-25) |
| Operating system | OS/2 |
| Available in | English |
| Type | Web browser |
| Website | ibm |
IBM WebExplorer was an early web browser designed at IBM facilities in the Research Triangle Park for OS/2.
Presented in 1994 with OS/2 Warp (v3), it was hailed as the best browser by Internet Magazine in their November issue and leveraged its position as the only native browser in OS/2 at that time. It was a "coming attraction" in The HTML Sourcebook: The Complete Guide to HTML. Almost immediately after the introduction of OS/2 Warp version 3, IBM dismantled the development team and that relegated the WebExplorer to the annals of history.[citation needed] OS/2 Warp 4 (1996) included it, but also included a link to download an OS/2 version of Netscape Navigator 2.02, which was late for shipping on CD. IBM had already planned the substitution of WebExplorer.[citation needed]
In 1995, it was added to AIX, IBM's proprietary UNIX platform.[1]
A 1996 review in PC Mag found that WebExplorer "lack[ed] several standard features" and wasn't very strong in terms of multimedia support. The IBM browser shipping with the IBM Internet Connection suite, WebExplorer Mosaic, was based on the Spyglass Mosaic code base and was found by the reviewer to be "far superior" to the OS/2 version, which was developed solely by IBM.[2]
| Version | Date | New features | Systems |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1.0 | January 6, 1995 (1995-01-06) | Customized Animations | OS/2 2.1, OS/2 Warp |
| 1.01 | April 5, 1995 (1995-04-05) | OS/2 2.1, OS/2 Warp | |
| 1.02 | June 28, 1995 (1995-06-28) | Drag and Drop Support
Color Palette Management |
OS/2 Warp |
| 1.03 | September 28, 1995 (1995-09-28) | Newsgroup Manager
HTML Extensions |
OS/2 Warp |
| 1.1a | March 22, 1996 (1996-03-22) | OS/2 Warp | |
| 1.1b | 1996 (1996) | OS/2 Warp | |
| 1.1c | June 6, 1996 (1996-06-06) | OS/2 Warp | |
| 1.1d | June 14, 1996 (1996-06-14) | OS/2 Warp | |
| 1.1e | July 11, 1996 (1996-07-11) | OS/2 Warp | |
| 1.1f | September 13, 1996 (1996-09-13) | Option "No Proxy For" | OS/2 Warp |
| 1.1g | November 7, 1996 (1996-11-07) | OS/2 Warp | |
| 1.1h | December 11, 1996 (1996-12-11) | OS/2 Warp | |
| 1.2 | 1996 (1996) | OS/2 Warp Version 4 |
There were severals builds released by IBM. IBM released some beta builds and also fixed many bugs in WebExplorer, one beta including support for Java.
The browser did not support Frames and the installation of plugins like Java was complicated.[10]
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