Windows IE Hidden

Technology News : Windows IE Hidden Browsing around, I came across a video on Metacafe that was currently attracting a lot of views. The video was titled “Windows IE Hidden”, which gives a first impression that it might be a very good info or tip or a report of some very confidential Microsoft insider news. The video goes like this -

Desktop shows up. A notepad window is opened and a sentence Windows IE Hidden in you’re “My Computer”… shows up. Next the “My Computer” icon gets clicked and in the address bar WWW.GOOGLE.COM gets typed (and ‘enter’ button pressed). A few seconds later Google homepage opens up in the same window. The motive behind the video to show you that there is a hidden Internet Explorer in “My Computer”.

Did you find this amazing and informative? Yes it is! except that this phenomenon in being for more than 10 years!! and yet a very small fraction of Internet Explorer users really know it. It is there since Internet Explorer 4.0


Windows IE Hidden ,While Earlier version of Internet Explorer were similar to any other application that can be downloaded by users, installed and uninstalled, Internet Explorer 4 was different in the way that it not only served as a browser but got integrated with the operating system and changed the nature of OS itself. While users working on Windows 95 could install Internet Explorer 4, Windows 98 had it as a part of OS itself, in fact except for few modifications Win98 was Win95+IE4 with no way to uninstall Internet Explorer. This met with a lot of criticism and was point of contention in lawsuits as United States v. Microsoft.

And if you thought that it was just “My Computer” that behaves like this then update yourself… it works with any folder be it “My Documents”, “Recycle Bin” or any other normal folder. Just open it put in the address and press enter and the page gets loaded with a very little response time compared to other browsers plus no annoying splash screens.

Now with Internet Explorer 7 and above though you still can put the address in the address bar of any folder but instead of page getting loaded on the folder itself, the Internet Explorer 7 application gets started opening the intended page.

Do you use Internet Explorer? and if yes how do you open a web page, from the application itself or by way mentioned above? Eager to hear from you. That Windows IE Hidden in Technology news today