Microsoft is providing a wealth of
information about IE 5.0 for developers along with the download. To find out more,
click the logo.
As promised at Tech Ed 98 in New Orleans earlier this month,
Microsoft is now offering a developer's version of their Internet Explorer 5.0 browser.
While spokespersons for Microsoft stated that IE's look won't change much, the
new version will bring a number of new features:
- "Drag-and-drop" features which will
allow a user to take an icon from a web site and place it either in a second frame
on the web page or even into another application, such as Microsoft Word.
- Support for the development of customized web pages, that don't include standard
toolbars or navigation controls, will allow creation of customized corporate intranets
(as an example given by Microsoft).
- New "persistence technology" will allow user-entered elements on a
web-page, such as personal information in a form, to remain in their current state,
even when a user leaves that page and returns later. While this could be done already
in a limited fashion with cookies, the new technology will provide a way to accomplish
this using XML (eXtended Markup Language), thus eliminating the cookie 4K limit.
- Web authors will now be able to query, through web pages, not only which browser
and version is being used, but which technologies have been enabled or disabled
by the user. In this manner the right content will appear on users' screens with
far fewer (or no) errors.
- Web pages will be able to be created with areas in which users will be able to
insert their own HTML content.
- I.E. 5.0 will allow "browser-less" applications to be built, which
can appear without the necessity of the browser interface being part of the screen.
- Any applications which use Internet Explorer functionality will be automatically
upgraded to integrate with Internet Explorer 5.0, when 5.0 is installed on the user's
PC.
There are a number of other new features, all of which you can read about on the
Web page below. Note that this is a developer's release, and isn't intended for
end-users as a default browser.
@Macarlo, Inc. @Macarlo's Shareware & Web OS/2 Java Lobby Member
Java Site Accredited
