[4] IE5 presided over a large market share increase over Netscape Navigator between 1999 and 2001, and offered many advanced features for its day.

The 1999 review in PC World noted, "Credit the never-ending game of browser one-upsmanship that Netscape and Microsoft play.

A 1999 review of IE5 by Paul Thurrott described IE5 in ways such as, "Think of IE 5.0 as IE 4.0 done right: All of the rough areas have been smoothed out..", "....comes optionally bundled with a full suite of Internet applications that many people are going to find irresistible.

[16] Version 5.0, launched on March 18, 1999, and subsequently bundled with Microsoft Office 2000, was a significant release that supported bi-directional text, ruby characters, XML, XSLT and the ability to save web pages in MHTML format.

There was enhanced support for CSS Level 1 and 2, and a side bar for web searches was introduced, allowing quick jumps throughout results.

[17] However, Internet Explorer 5 incorrectly includes the padding and borders within a specified width or height; this results in a narrower or shorter rendering of a box.

XMLHttpRequest is an API that can be used by JavaScript, and other Web browser scripting languages to transfer XML and other text data between a page's client side and server side,[19] and was available since the introduction of Internet Explorer 5.0[20] and is accessible via JScript, VBScript and other scripting languages supported by IE browsers.

Windows Script Host was also installed with IE5, although later on viruses and malware would attempt to use this ability as an exploit, which resulted pressure to disable it for security reasons.

If a user still want to download it on a newer operating system, the only way is to use an outdated web browser such as Netscape 4.8.

Although newer browsers have been released, IE5 rendering mode continues to have an impact, as a 2008 Ars Technica article notes: On April 3, 2000, Judge Jackson issued his findings of fact that Microsoft had abused its monopoly position by attempting to "dissuade Netscape from developing Navigator as a platform", that it "withheld crucial technical information", and attempted to reduce Navigator's usage share by "giving Internet Explorer away and rewarding firms that helped build its usage share" and "excluding Navigator from important distribution channels".

This remedy was overturned on appeal, amidst charges that Jackson had revealed a bias against Microsoft in communication with reporters.

Other optional installs included Offline Browsing Pack, Internet Explorer Core Web Fonts, and Visual Basic Scripting (VBScript) support.