MSIE is available in both 16bit and 32bit versions for Windows 3.x and Windows 95 respectively, as well as other platforms, I can only comment on the Windows products as I don't have ready access to anything else. All of these browsers support the use of fonts within web pages, a feature some other early browsers don't, this can improve the viewability of many pages.
MSIE v2 was the default browser distributed with Windows 95. It is a very basic browser with no recognition of "frames" or "tables" or any kind of scripting. In this day and age it is only therefore really usable as an emergency standby or for checking the layout of pages for other non-frames capable browsers. This is not such a bad idea as apparently there are still a lot of Internet users who use this type of browser.
MSIE v2.1 is a 16bit program designed for Windows 3.x. It needs a minimum of a 386 processor to work and supports both frames and tables, but no scripting. It works well under Windows 95 and can be found in a subdirectory of the "Compuserve" distribution CD's that litter the covers of so many magazines. A very useful, fast program that won't get "hung" by any badly written scripts or applets, as it just ignores them. The whole program can be copied into a subdirectory by itself, so it won't interfere with any other applications. Great for fast "surfing" when you're looking for that elusive bit of information and you can't be bothered to wait for that "ultimate internet experience" to finally load.
Now we come to the current (late '97) crop of programs.
MSIE v3.x is available for both Windows 3.x and Windows 95. This is a full featured program with support for both Java and scripting on both platforms, as well as a few other features that were introduced at this time, some of which have been accepted as "standard". I should point out at this time that both Microsoft and Netscape, and possibly other browsers, have introduced features with their products that are unique to that product, in the hope that the feature will be accepted by the appropriate standard, this of course has not always been the case. Consequently there will always be web pages that only work in just the one browser, and indeed in some cases, in just one or two releases of that product. Possibly more of this in another article.
Although these programs are available for download, and as you're reading this I can presume you already have access to the Internet, the easiest way by far is to get hold of a magazine cover CD and install it from there. In the event of not having a CD drive your options admittedly are limited, but it's worth asking around if anyone has an external drive to plug onto your printer port that you can borrow, rather than wait for the relatively large file to finally appear on your hard drive. It is definitely not advisable to try and download the latest version of the software as soon as it is released. You and two million others will tie up the Internet for days, and many of you will be frustrated when the connection is lost part way through. I must emphasise here that only one copy of MSIE v3 or v4 can exist on any one Windows 95 installation. Trying out a new or different version will overwrite, at least in part, your existing installation, requiring a reinstall if you want to revert.
In my experience installation has always been painless, but I'm one of those few who actually read the instructions before double-clicking the "setup" icon. Internet Explorer, probably moreso than any other product, integrates into the operating system, especially under Windows 95, and therefore it can be imperative to know of any limitations before you start. As with any software installation or upgrade there is a risk of things not working properly when you've finished, a full system backup can be relatively cheaply achieved these days, either onto tape or disk, allowing a quick reversion in the event of an unsatisfactory install.
MSIE v3 and v4 come with external E-Mail and Newsreader programs. The basic one is Microsoft Mail and News, (original title ! ), and can be used with either product, MSIE4 comes with Outlook Express, rather more sophisticated in it's capabilities and performing both functions, but at the end of the day, what do you want from an e-mail program or newsreader. For those of you with specific requirements, any E-Mail or Newsreader program can be configured to work in conjunction with either MSIE3 or 4. These mail and newsreader programs can also be invoked in their own right, enabling simply the checking of the newsgroups or whatever without having to launch the whole browser environment to achieve this.
MSIE4 can be installed either as a relatively stand-alone browser, or in an "Active Desktop" environment, whereby, given a link to the Internet, various sources of data can be fed right onto your Windows 95 workspace. This is not really a practical feature for the average modem-connected user, apart from having to tie up the phone-line on a more or less permanent basis, the machine resources required dictate a fairly high-level machine with a lot of RAM and, of course, while your desktop is being updated, you are effectively pinching your own bandwidth should you wish to use the connection for anything else. I've no doubt this feature could be very useful in a corporate environment over an intranet, but I feel is probably of little practical value to the average "surfer".
Another application supplied with MSIE4 is Frontpage Express, a cut down version of Microsoft's Frontpage web-page editor and really rather good as a WYSIWYG application for the quick preparation of HTML pages. If you've never used a tool like this, the environment is rather like a word processor or DTP application, you simply type in the text you want, format it with appropriate fonts, styles etc., place your graphics as you want them, and the program does all the dirty work of writing the HTML to achieve this. Having double-checked it in your browser, 'cos we're all pessimists, your page is ready for publication on the www for the whole world to see. This program, like many others of the ilk, can be great for generating pages, but if a carefully tailored pre-generated page that was written manually, or with another package, is loaded, it may have interpretation problems, especially with some of the more esoteric features. The rule seems to be, and this applies to other packages as well, use it as a page generator, if the results are what you want leave well alone, but if you fine tune it manually, for instance by removing what may appear to be redundant tags, the page may well not reload into the editor properly. The up side is that you don't have to learn HTML to write sophisticated pages, the downside is that the pages are usually larger than necessary, not a problem for the average home page, but the overhead can start to build on a site comprising several hundred pages. I'll also mention at this point a frequently quoted parameter. The "recommended" maximum size for a web page, including graphics etc., is about 50kb. If you find yourself going much beyond this it's recommended that you try to split the page into two or more sub-pages, with appropriate links. Not everyone has the latest modem technology, it would be a shame for all your hard work not to be recognised because a potential reader got bored waiting for the page to load.
Having diverged from the subject slightly, I'll now go back to the browsers proper. MSIE4 is configurable in almost every respect, indeed for features such as Mail and News, under Windows 95 at least , one can have a choice on a drop-down menu as to which program one wants to use, in the event of having more than one Mail or News reader installed. Accessability features for those with various impairments can be tailored to suit, as well as the general "look and feel" of the environment, right down to defining a style sheet for use with all web-pages. A feature I particularly like, and this may well be available on other browsers, is the ability to group "favourites" or "bookmarks" in sub-folders on a drop-down menu. Thus, in my case, various photographic references are gouped in one set of sub-folders, software suppliers in another, hardware manufacturers in a third, etc. The "history" feature in MSIE4 has also been somewhat enhanced. A sub-window opens on the browser listing a set of icons for each day of the current week, also each previous week for as many days as the parameter has been set for. A click on the icon opens a list of sites visited on that day, then another click reveals the pages visited on that particular site. Great if, like me, you don't always bookmark a page then find you need to refer back to it, not so good if you don't want anyone else to see where you've been surfing, but this feature can easily be de-activated by setting the history level to zero. If you're that paranoid, you'll probably want to clear the cache as well before exiting.
Right-clicking on the various elements on a page will produce one of several pop-up menus depending on the nature of the item clicked. The two I find most useful are the ability to open a link in a new window, thus saving the original page if the link is of no interest, great for working with results pages from search engines, and the "save as file" option for graphics, as well as the HTML from within frames.
I'm sure most of you have seen the "Scripting Error" message pop up every so often, probably less so in Navigator than MSIE. The reason for this is that Netscape introduced Javascript with Navigator 2, then enhanced it for Navigator 3. Microsoft were a little slow off the mark with Javascript, introducing their own implementation as JScript with MSIE3. This unfortunately was only a major sub-set of the original Netscape Javascript and consequently features that work in Navigator 3 will give errors in Navigator 2 and MSIE3. An international standard for Javascript has now been set up by an independant body and the scripting engine incorporated with MSIE4 adheres closely to this. That is not to say that there will be no more scripting errors, as both Netscape and Microsoft have used features in their scripting engines previously that are not included in this standard.
Microsoft also introduced VBScript (Visual Basic Scripting) with MSIE3. This is a rather easier language to learn and implement, indeed some of it's features are far superior to Javascript, but it is only readily recognised by MSIE, Netscape needing a "plug-in" to interpret it. A point to bear in mind here is that any browser that is not scripting-capable will simply ignore the carefully prepared HTML, indeed it mey even display it as gobbledegook if it is not properly written.
Authored late '97 by Chris Eve (
kypfer@itl.net)