Unless you've been living in the proverbial cave these past couple of weeks (or riding your bike from San Francisco to Los Angeles, as the case may be), you probably know Microsoft has finally unveiled a new preview release of Internet Explorer 4.0. I'm sure most of you, being bleeding-edge gotta-have-it-now Webmonkey readers, probably thrashed your hard drive with the first release, and can uninstall Shell Integration in your sleep by now. This new version, however, adds more than just polish and stability - it includes some interesting new features as well.
Microsoft Internet Explorer 4.0 Platform Preview 2 (or MSIE4.0PP2, for the geekier of us) is the long-awaited next version of Redmond's Web client. Check out the review we wrote of the first release for some perspective, then get ready to download the immense 15- to 20-MB file. Here are a few of the new features you'll get:
Active Channels: We've been hearing about Microsoft's alternative to Netscape's Netcaster for some time now, and it has been delivered in this release. A slew of content providers (Wired among them) has signed on to create full-screen, Dynamic HTML-based "channels" of content. These experiences get downloaded automatically, and live in an Explorer Bar that slides on and off the left side of the screen. It's an effective interface, and the idea is interesting, but there's one small problem: Almost all the channels are, frankly, pretty boring. It seems the learning curve for Dynamic HTML is a rather tough climb for the traditional media outlets selected as "featured content." Not all are horrible, granted, but the majority seem to think that the PointCast Smart Screen is the pinnacle of interactive information delivery. But then again, remember corporate Web sites in 1994....
Security Zones: Microsoft has also made an effort to quell the wave of security fears surrounding IE's shell integration (the Web as desktop). One interesting new feature, Security Zones, is a programmable alert system that attempts to tell you exactly where you are surfing at any moment. As you jump from site to site, the bottom right-hand corner of the browser window tells you whether you're out on the Net, cruising through your intranet, or poking around on your local drive. Plus, sysadmins can add and delete sites from various zones, and decide whether their users are allowed into specific zones. It's a small step toward easing the "lost in space" feeling so many new users get when following link after link. There's probably a better way of doing this than a simple little message at the bottom of the screen, though. Changing the IE icon in the toolbar would be more effective, considering how people rely on it for checking network activity.
Explorer Bars: The first platform preview gave us a glimpse at a new interface paradigm for searching: the Explorer Bar. Now Search, Channels, Favorites, and History all have their own bars. The split-screen effect is much like a frameset - a common navigational feature employed by Web sites, with content on the right and functionality running down the left side of the screen. The History bar is especially interesting, automatically categorizing your surfing history by week, day, and Web site. Now if we could get it to group them by subject, why, that'd be totally cool.
There are lots of other bells, whistles, and general improvements - including a host of performance boosts to the display of pages, the downloading of information, and Java. Support for Cascading Style Sheets and CSS Positioning have been improved as well, and Dynamic HTML veers into some interesting new territory, adding to the bag of tricks Web designers can start playing with.
Frequent readers of this column will know that I like this browser. Microsoft's 4.0 version of Internet Explorer is fast, well-designed, and takes the smarter approach to the fundamentals of Web publishing. Microsoft has made a clear move toward embracing not only the corporate user, but the end user at home, regardless of experience level. If you can push aside the marketing hype, business analysis, and political maneuverings surrounding the browser wars, I think we can clearly see a winner here.
But where does that leave us as publishers, designers, geeks, and surfers? In an uncomfortable alliance with the world's largest software company. We become mere third-party developers in a vertical market called the Web. Is that really where we want to be?
I wouldn't write off Netscape just yet....
This article appeared originally in HotWired.
