IBM WebExplorer displaying wikipedia

Spanish IBM WebExplorer displaying wikipedia in 2004

IBM WebExplorer was an early web browser designed at IBM facilities in the Research Triangle Park for OS/2.

Name

Not to be confused with IBM Web Browser, a later program based on Mozilla, or with Microsoft Internet Explorer.

History

Presented in 1994 with OS/2 Warp (v3), it was hailed as the best browser by Internet Magazine in their November issue^{[citation needed]} and leveraged its position as the only native browser in OS/2 at that time. 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. IBM WebExplorer, at that time, was the browser application to beat. 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.

Features

• Support for HTML 3.0 (with tables)
• Usenet reader
• Some of its parts were scriptable with Rexx. Some external companies used this capability to offer an enhanced browser with IBM's rendering engine
• A page could define what the animated throbber should look like. It was implemented through a non-standard <frame> HTML tag. OS/2 users created several animations. The latter introduction of Web frames leads WebExplorer to confusion on modern pages
• A presentation mode without visible menu bars
• A menu option Links collecting all the links in the page. It was used by IBM VoiceType for voice navigation
• Java applets

Shortcomings

• No web frames
• No redirections
• No virtual hosts
• No HTTPS
• No plugins
• No JavaScript
• No PNGs
• No progressive JPEGs

External links

• The official page at IBM (version from 1999 at the Internet Archive).
• Last public version (1.1h) as a ZIP file.
• The IBM OS/2 WebExplorer
• IBM WebExplorer is mentioned in DOJ vs Microsoft.