RIP: Internet Explorer Retires Today—Let’s See Which Versions You Remember

🪦1995-2022.

Remember sneaking onto your parent’s PC, kicking the on button with your toe and booting up Internet Explorer?

Credit: Reddit.

Well, the chunky grey aesthetic and crashes every five minutes are all coming to an end.

Microsoft Corp announced that its prehistoric browser will retire today, 15 June, after 27 years. From 2003-2004, Internet Explorer had 90 per cent of browser market share—compared to 2 per cent in 2019.

The company has since launched Microsoft Edge in 2015 as a faster, more efficient alternative, up against competitors like Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox.

For those of us around from 1995, the browser is a comforting symbol of nostalgia. Let’s put to the test how many iterations of the design you remember.

Logos.

Whether you had the logo on your home screen, taskbar or opened it from the menu, you’d be familiar with at least one of these beautifully bad logos.

Credit: Version Museum (and all images onward).

Pls explain what was going on in the graphic design team in 1995.

Internet Explorer 1.0 (1995).

Okay, we don’t remember it looking this chaotic.

The logos, the boxes, the strange placement of links, the “new to the internet” guide…it’s mayhem.

Internet Explorer 5 (1999).

The browser had a bit of a makeover, retaining the grey background—but things were a little more sleek.

Internet Explorer 6 (2001).

A new millennium had arrived and we were literally sending advanced technology to space.

Meanwhile, Internet Explorer looked like this.

Internet Explorer 9 (2011).

The browser got some kind of glassy effect going on, and this apparently looked stylish back in the year of MySpace, emo aesthetic and the beginnings of Facebook.

Internet Explorer 11 (2013).

By 2013, we’d had five generations of iPhones. And we had this.

Along with that iconic Windows home screen with the bright blue sky and rolling green hill, Internet Explorer will remain a part of our collective internet memory. Rest in peace.