sentence: the project was officially announced by microsoft at the end of july 1996 that a native version of ie for '' solaris and other popular variants of unix '' would be finished by the end of the year , which would have '' equivalent functionality as that provided in microsoft internet explorer 3.0 '' , thus '' delivering on its commitment to provide full-featured web browser support on all major operating system platforms '' as well as '' supporting and promoting open standards , including html , activex and java '' .