Features Internet Explorer

1 features

1.1 standards support
1.2 non-standard extensions
1.3 favicon
1.4 usability , accessibility
1.5 cache
1.6 group policy

features

page zoom seen in ie9

internet explorer has been designed view broad range of web pages , provide features within operating system, including microsoft update. during heyday of browser wars, internet explorer superseded netscape when caught technologically support progressive features of time.

standards support

internet explorer, using trident layout engine:

supports html 4.01, html 5, css level 1, level 2 , level 3, xml 1.0, , dom level 1, minor implementation gaps.
fully supports xslt 1.0 obsolete microsoft dialect of xslt referred wd-xsl, loosely based on december 1998 w3c working draft of xsl. support xslt 2.0 lies in future: semi-official microsoft bloggers have indicated development underway, no dates have been announced.
almost full conformance css 2.1 has been added in internet explorer 8 release. trident rendering engine in internet explorer 9 in 2011, scored highest in official w3c conformance test suite css 2.1 of major browsers.
supports xhtml in internet explorer 9 (trident version 5.0). prior versions can render xhtml documents authored html compatibility principles , served text/html mime-type.
supports subset of svg in internet explorer 9 (trident version 5.0), excluding smil, svg fonts , filters.

internet explorer uses doctype sniffing choose between standards mode , quirks mode in deliberately mimicks nonstandard behaviours of old versions of msie html , css rendering on screen (internet explorer uses standards mode printing). provides own dialect of ecmascript called jscript.

internet explorer criticised tim berners-lee limited support svg promoted w3c.

non-standard extensions

internet explorer has introduced array of proprietary extensions many of standards, including html, css, , dom. has resulted in number of web pages appear broken in standards-compliant web browsers , has introduced need quirks mode allow rendering improper elements meant internet explorer in these other browsers.

internet explorer has introduced number of extensions dom have been adopted other browsers. these include innerhtml property, provides access html string within element ; xmlhttprequest object, allows sending of http request , receiving of http response, , may used perform ajax; , designmode attribute of contentdocument object, enables rich text editing of html documents . of these functionalities not possible until introduction of w3c dom methods. ruby character extension html accepted module in w3c xhtml 1.1, though not found in versions of w3c html.

microsoft submitted several other features of ie consideration w3c standardization. these include behaviour css property, connects html elements jscript behaviours (known html components, htc); html+time profile, adds timing , media synchronization support html documents (similar w3c xhtml+smil), , vml vector graphics file format. however, rejected, @ least in original forms; vml subsequently combined pgml (proposed adobe , sun), resulting in w3c-approved svg format, 1 of few vector image formats being used on web, ie did not support until version 9.

other non-standard behaviours include: support vertical text, in syntax different w3c css3 candidate recommendation, support variety of image effects , page transitions, not found in w3c css, support obfuscated script code, in particular jscript.encode. support embedding eot fonts in web pages.

favicon

support favicons first added in internet explorer 5. internet explorer supports favicons in png, static gif , native windows icon formats. in windows vista , later, internet explorer can display native windows icons have embedded png files.

usability , accessibility

internet explorer makes use of accessibility framework provided in windows. internet explorer user interface ftp, operations similar of windows explorer. pop-up blocking , tabbed browsing added respectively in internet explorer 6 , internet explorer 7. tabbed browsing can added older versions installing msn search toolbar or yahoo toolbar.

cache

internet explorer caches visited content in temporary internet files folder allow quicker access (or offline access) visited pages. content indexed in database file, known index.dat. multiple index.dat files exist index different content—visited content, web feeds, visited urls, cookies, etc.

prior ie7, clearing cache used clear index files not reliably removed, posing potential security , privacy risk. in ie7 , later, when cache cleared, cache files more reliably removed, , index.dat file overwritten null bytes.

caching has been improved in ie9.

group policy

internet explorer configurable using group policy. administrators of windows server domains (for domain-joined computers) or local computer can apply , enforce variety of settings on computers affect user interface (such disabling menu items , individual configuration options), underlying security features such downloading of files, zone configuration, per-site settings, activex control behaviour , others. policy settings can configured each user , each machine. internet explorer supports integrated windows authentication.