Get the most from the 'net (Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.5)

Member Name: MichaelR

Product:	Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.5
Date:	06/05/01 (34 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Fast, Stable, Reliable, Part of the whole Windows setup

Disadvantages: None that I can see...

Well, Internet Explorer 5.5 has come in for a lot of criticism.

Internet Explorer really has been criticised all through its history really. Probably due in no small part to the fact that it is a Microsoft product - and some people have a real problem with Microsoft products.

Let's be honest though - Internet Explorer 5.5 is a great piece of software. It's a huge improvement over previous versions of IE and it trounces the only real commercial opposition (Netscape Navigator 6 - see separate op).

Historically, Internet Explorer always had a real problem with being slow and unstable and so anyone with a real interest in computing and the Internet would uninstall it and use the far superior Netscape Navigator software instead.

Right up until version 4 of both browsers the Netscape software was clearly ahead - being faster in its URL retrieval and much less prone to crashing and reporting of exceptions that quite simply did not exist. (Object Expected etc). Unfortunately, Netscape stood still for a long time and allowed Microsoft to silently creep through with a much improved version of Internet Explorer. Netscape then messed up big time with Version 6 of their browser...

Version 5 of IE was a real turning point. The addition of the smart drop-down choices from the address bar (which are compiled from your browsing history according to what you type into the bar - a great improvement on the annoying auto-complete of old), the improved format for the sidebars, 128 bit strength encryption outside of the US for the first time, and many other things too numerous to mention really made IE stand above Netscape for the first time.

It did suffer slightly from still being a bit crash-happy, but it was much more reliable than its predecessors and I think that the really buggy IE5 to which most people refer was the beta version. You can't expect a beta to be perfect...

IE5.5 fixed almost all of the bugs an
d allowed greater integration with other communication and internet tools such as MSN Messenger, Microsoft FrontPage, RealPlayer etc. It also carried improved integration into the Windows operating system - speeding up the browsing of files on local machines quite considerably.

The fact that IE5.5 is now a packaged part of the Windows Operating System (from the Millennium Edition) ensures that nothing can really beat it for speed. Windows is built around IE now, so you are really on a hiding to nothing if you attempt to find a faster browser for Windows. If you're on Linux or a Mac then IE is not the best choice, but for Windows users it really can't be beaten.

IE5.5 is now the industry standard browser too. Everyone write pages for IE - I doubt you'll find more than a handful of developers out there who really give two hoots about Netscape support anymore.

Granted - IE doesn't follow W3C conventions too well, but it does have the greatest support for all sorts of different HMTL tags and scripting languages. It has much better support for things such as DHTML and ActiveX than any of its rivals...

And you can have multiple instances of IE5.5 without it crashing. Much more than can be said for Netscape 6 (You're lucky to get one instance of that running without a major system crash!)

It's fast, user friendly, stable, well supported and FREE to download if you don't already have it installed as a part of your OS.

What more could you really want? I think a few more people would like it if they removed the word "Microsoft" from the title, but you really have got to give Microsoft credit this time. They did well with IE5.5... infact they've been getting it right quite a lot lately. (Not before time!)

If you've not been using IE5.5 then you've probably been limiting your enjoyment of the 'net. So go get it! Now!

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