Internet Explorer 5.0, 5.5 And 6

After many years of great little browsers, Microsoft has finally issued a truly buggy browser--the Internet Explorer 5.0 version. As I already had the 5.0 Beta, and 5.03 Beta was supposed to have a few more FTP features, I downloaded the newer version. Surprise!!! The GUI is unstable and looks different everytime I fire up IE. The navigation interface malfunctions. It isn't consistent in how it sees layers. It can't consistently parse the same HTML document in the same way--perhaps related to the GUI problem and the layers problem. It can't see .jpg's unless you're looking at them on the Internet, which makes Internet Explorer 5.03 almost useless for webdesigners. I'll continue to always attempt to make all pages work for IE, but 5.03 trashed so many files and libraries that even downgrading to 4.01 didn't fix the problem. In addition, since HTML files look different every time you view them in the 5.03 build, I'm not sure how they really  look. We deserve better and Microsoft deserves it if the Justice Department thrashes 'em. Internet Explorer 5.03 is a buggy, unstable mess.

Different patches for these problems are now being posted at Microsoft, but they don't work. Somehow, when IE 5.03 is "actively" being installed, it trashes it's own libraries and drivers. Buggy, buggy, buggy...

Mike

PS: The most recent download seems to have corrected all bugs, but I also had to get a new harddrive and reinstall Windows, so who's to say why Internet Explorer 5.0 usually works so good, now. The interface and layers problems are still present.

But wait, there's more!!! The new "minor" upgrade to Internet Explorer, aptly named 5.5 has the usual download problems. The first try fished around for about a half hour for a suitable site, then decided there wasn't one and gave me a fail message. Being somewhat persistent, I went back to try again. Since the first try had failed, I decided to download the "download helper" (or whatever cute name MicroSoft is using this year for those things). The moment the download started, my entire system froze and I had to cut power and run ScanDisk to restore things to normal. I'll let you know how try number three goes. No choice but to try, as all the security fixes and patches I've applied to IE 5 have blinded it to Flash, and I really like Flash.

Then I finally got Internet Explorer 5.5 to install and was amazed. All the PlugIns worked again. Blinding speed on pageviews. Backward compliance with older JavaScripts and DHTML (most, just a limited number of exceptions). The only annoyance is a nonstandard error (totally erroneous) on some older scriptings (things such as "navform" and similar--they run, but a "false positive" for "error on page" appears). Compared with the total botch that is Netscape 6, I actually believe that my "workhorse" browser will become either IE 5.5 or IE 6 Beta as soon as Netscape 6 goes official. From time to time, MicroSoft actually does get it right. This is one of those times.

***WRONG***  After enjoying all the cool features unique to IE 5.5 and so lacking in NS 4.7 I found a really bad bug--IE 5.5 breaks all by itself. I've been assured by others that IE 6 has the same problem. It initially started with a corrupt DOM recognition that made some JavaScripting set off the "error on page" warnings. This was fixable by going into Control Panel, selecting Add/Remove Software, and choosing to Repair IE 5.5 build (hint--go to ZDNet and download the complete executable, makes the repair a five minute local chore as opposed to a two-hour download). The other problem is not fixable. For some unknown reason, IE 5.5 has now decided that all Flash and Director movies and games can only be viewed on local. When surfing the 'Net, all I get is the substitute .gif placeholder graphic. Very annoying and no known fix. Once again, IE somehow manages to trash its own libraries, with no way to fix things. Fortunately, my new Athlon based system should arrive soon, so I'll be working off of fresh installs of everything. Might even spring for the disk for IE 6.

Discovered by accident how to fix the "blind to Flash" problem: Downgrade the ActiveX control to Flashplayer 4. Click the previous highlighted words and do a "save as" then run the installer. You can visit Macromedia when you get a chance and upgrade again to Flashplayer 5, but hang on to Version 4 of the file for future use. I need to do it almost twice a week. Have yet to find a really good workaround on the corrupt DOM, sometimes a "repair Internet Explorer" through the Control Panel fixes it, sometimes it doesn't.

If you're after standards compliance, go with IE 5.5 or 6 Beta. With the minor exception of a very small bug in CSS2 for the FORM: area (it ignores it and picks the smallest standard font), compliance is nearly 100%.

About all the fun and games with Java - just get the Java PlugIn, or the Java 2 Runtime Environment which will install the PlugIn automatically. The amazing folks at Sun and JavaSoft have several choices for those who use Internet Explorer AND want to continue using standard Java.

PSS: As we're so fond of pointing out, anybody using IE and XP is surfing using fullon spyware. All versions of XP are now officially spyware and may also be classified shortly as malware.