Microsoft Corp has announced the shipping of the Internet Explorer Administration kit 4.01 for Windows, Unix and Macintosh, the IE resource Kit and IE itself on Sun Microsystems Inc’s Solaris Unix and the Macintosh. Microsoft did most of the Unix porting work itself for IE, which is unusual for the company where non-Microsoft-platforms are concerned. However, it did tap Windows-on-Unix company Mainsoft Inc, PC-to-Unix connectivity company Hummingbird Communications Ltd and some other third party technologies. Microsoft is also known to have engaged Hewlett-Packard Co engineers for the HP-UX version, and Microsoft said that would be available some time in the first half, without being more specific. This version is available on Solaris 2.5. The administrators’ kit has been available to licensees and Microsoft Partners since the introduction of version 4.0 of the browser last fall. It enable the customization and deployment of the browser across multiple platforms, says the company. The Resource Kit contains the administrator’s kit, the browser and the Internet Client software development kit (SDK).