First Look: Internet Explorer 3.0
Heather Thornton takes a look at the latest version of Microsoftís
Internet Explorer Web browser, which is guaranteed to make your
online experience fuller, more secure and more funHeather Thornton
takes a look at the latest version of Microsoftís Internet
Explorer Web browser, which is guaranteed to make your online
experience fuller, more secure and more fun
CRUISE IT WITH
INTERNET EXPLORER 3.0
Microsoft® Internet Explorer 3.0, the next generation of Microsoftís award-winning software for exploring the Internet and sending electronic mail, is now available free of charge to anyone who has a PC and a modem.
The beta version of the software can be downloaded via Microsoftís home page at http://www.microsoft.com/ie. The final
version is expected to be ready, again free of charge, some time
this summer.
Getting started
Internet Explorer 3.0 is simple to install, integrating seamlessly with Microsoft® Windows® 95. Like Windows 95, Internet Explorer 3.0 is based on 32-bit code and, for this reason, the software also integrates perfectly with MSN, The Microsoft Network, providing a bridge between Microsoftís unique content and the Internet and World Wide Web.
Like all of its stable mates, Internet Explorer 3.0 has tool tips so that you can manipulate almost anything on screen by clicking the right mouse button. Each time the mouse pointer moves over an icon, it changes colour so that you know where you are and what particular buttons and icons do. The main toolbar also changes colour whenever you download anything from the Internet.
Internet Explorer 3.0 has a Sign Up Wizard designed to make it easier to join the Internet for the first time. The Wizard configures your PC, dials a server, connects to your Internet Service Provider, or the MSN if you prefer.
Another nifty addition is the search facility. Click on this and
Internet Explorer connects you to a powerful search engine to
trawl the entire Internet and all of its servers for topics of
interest to you. It will also intelligently understand a Web
siteís address (URL), meaning that you no longer have to
remember to type the ëhttpí before Microsoftís
ëmicrosoft.comí World Wide Web site, for example.
Active advances
Internet Explorer 3.0 is the first to include Sunís Java programming language and Microsoft ActiveX controls for novices and Webmasters alike. Both industry standard technologies make creating and viewing Internet Web pages more dynamic and interactive.
Thanks to ActiveMovie, with Internet Explorer 3.0 you will for
the first time be able to view Internet pages with videos, animation,
sound, voice and constantly updated information such as foreign
exchange rates, for example. ActiveX also lets you open sophisticated
documents directly embedded in an Internet Web page and work on
the data in familiar Microsoft® Excel or Microsoft®
Word format within the browser itself. You can also view Internet
pages developed with Java, JavaScript, VBScript or Netscape Plug
Ins.
Large supporting cast
Internet Explorer 3.0 supports many other industry standards, most notably the most up-to-date version of HTML, version 3.2, the programming language at the heart of the World Wide Web. You can now, therefore, browse Internet Web pages which include multiple borderless or floating frames, stylesheets, tables and with support for all multimedia formats, on-page video and sound. The inclusion of HTML 3.2 in Internet Explorer 3.0 also enables you to open multiple Web pages on screen at once without having to navigate backwards and forwards between different pages.
Internet Explorer 3.0 supports all popular multimedia formats including MPEG, MIDI, AVI and WAV as well as Direct3D, Microsoftís application programming interface (API) which enables you to view full 3D Web pages on the Internet. The final version will also include VRML, virtual reality modelling language, the industry-wide programming language to make Web pages come alive with virtual reality.
Most graphics files formats are also supported including JPEG,
GIF, TIFF and BMP meaning that you can view a Web page regardless
of which software created it.
Meetings, fun and fonts
NetMeeting is a totally new and revolutionary tool within Internet Explorer 3.0 which lets Internet users talk and work on documents at the same time using the Internet and standard phone lines. Two users separated by thousands of miles can, for example, connect via the Internet, share the same word processing file and work on it concurrently while speaking to each other at the same time over the Internet ñ it doesnít even matter if one of the users doesnít have the word processor software installed. Whatís more, if you use an Internet Service Provider such as MSN, youíll only pay a local call rate for the international NetMeeting.
Internet Explorer 3.0 also includes DirectPlay, a Microsoft API which encourages online gaming communities and helps games players to find like minded people online and to join games over the Internet. The games can take place across the world in realtime using ActiveX controls or can be downloaded from the Internet and played alone.
Internet Explorer 3.0 now supports different font styles, sizes and colours, allowing Internet Web page designers to include any font for the first time, instead of presenting fonts as bitmapped images which are slow to download and limited in their design.
Printing pages from the Internet has also been enhanced. When
printing a Web page, you can now choose to print a table of links
or URLs, the Internet address which tells the computer where a
Web page resides. Internet Explorer 3.0 now also features a print
preview feature so that you can see exactly what a page will look
like before it is printed.
Simple, secure communication
Like its predecessors, Internet Explorer 3.0 supports Internet email as standard and lets you sign up to the thousands of Internet newsgroups. Its Mail and News feature means you donít have to have an additional piece of email software, such as Microsoft® Exchange to receive Internet mail or news feeds to your desktop. At the heart of Internet Explorer 3.0 is support for SMTP/POP3 so that you can personalise, customise and sort your mail to suit your needs. Translating attachments to binary format and supporting the industry standard MIME format, any document can be attached to the email and sent over the Internet using Internet Explorer 3.0.
As security is a primary concern for consumers and businesses
using the Internet, Microsoft has increased the security of its
browser considerably. Using a technology called Trusted Code,
the browser automatically checks if software you download over
the Internet is authentic, and supports many security protocols
including Secure Sockets Layer 2/3 (SSL) and Private Communication
Technology 1 (PCT). Similarly, Internet Explorer 3.0 supports
Crypto API, a technology that enables digital signatures, encryption
and decryption and signature verification. Microsoft is also currently
working with companies such as Verisign and GTE to introduce electronic
certificates of authentication for software to prove their authenticity.
Parental guidance
Internet Explorer 3.0 is ideal for parents with young children
as it is the first browser to adhere to the stringent international
Platform for Independent Content Selection (PICS) Internet rating
scheme. PICS is designed to protect children from unsolicited
Internet content by rating content in a way similar to that in
which movies are rated today. With Internet Explorer 3.0 and a
unique password, parents can restrict the levels of nudity, language,
sex and violence which their children are exposed to on the Internet,
or even block access to Web pages without PICS ratings altogether.
Home improvement
The Internet Explorer 3.0 software is highly customisable so that you can change the toolbar, favourites folder, user preferences and even the start page to suit your tastes. You could, for example, always automatically load up to a
Web page about your favourite soap or create preferred links to the stock market or weather Web pages.
Internet Explorer 3.0 comes with its own Internet Explorer Administration
Kit (IEAK), designed for businesses that want to deploy more customised
browsers throughout their organisation for connecting to the Internet
or Intranet. By using the familiar Wizard seen in other Microsoft
products, Internet Explorer guides companies through the configuration
of
Internet mail and news, custom start pages (the companyís home page for instance), search pages and favourites folders. You can now even share your favourite Internet home pages with your friends and colleagues ñ these can be stored as standard Windows 95 shortcuts, so that you can email home pages to others which they can click on to join automatically. Using the Windows 95 Explorer, you can also sort and store them any way you want.
Finally, Internet Explorer 3.0 now supports Internet connections via ISDN and uses much less memory than any of its competitors. It also supports Smart Caching so that you can even work with Web pages off-line, disconnected from the Internet.
Internet Explorer 3.0 will be available in 23 languages within
90 days of its final release meaning that you can view Internet
pages in any language anywhere in the world. All in all, the new
version of Internet Explorer makes it easy for you to get the
most out of the Internet and World Wide Web, whatever your needs.
M
graphics:
Internet Explorer 3.0 is the first to include ActiveX controls,
which make creating and viewing Internet Web pages more dynamic.
NetMeeting enables
realtime voice and data communications over
the Internet.