Microso ft's Free-Lunch Browser

Microsoft Internet Explorer 4.0 delivers Internet applications and desktop integration -- and you can't beat the price.

Pete Loshin

Internet Explorer 4.0, Microsoft's answer to the Communicator superbrowser from Netscape, proves the adage that competition benefits the consumer. A full Internet applications suite, IE 4.0 borrows some of Communicator's features and adds new ones at an unbeatable price -- free. This shows how eager Microsoft is to get it on your desktop.

The preview release was stable enough to show off many of the new features. They include Outlook Express (an e-mail and newsgroup reader), NetMeeting (a collaboration tool), NetShow (a streaming multimedia client), and FrontPad (a Web editor). Those brave enough to install IE shel l integration will be rewarded with what seems like an OS upgrade, enabling a uniform look and feel -- and single-click document activation.

Desktop integration is apparent at every turn: You can now use IE for viewing and navigating disks, folders, networks, and computers. Active Desktop lets you drop HTML pages and ActiveX components anywhere on the desktop ( see the screen ), so now the Web is the desktop and the desktop is the Web.

Dynamic HTML, an open extension to HTML for Web-content interaction that bypasses the server, is also new. You can drag and drop "floating" images on a page or manipulate the results of a database query.

The Favorites function includes a site-subscription option, directing the browser to periodically check subscribed pages. It highlights updated links with a red "gleam" on each page's entry in the Favorites menu.

Also new is Mi crosoft Wallet, for managing shipping addresses and credit-card numbers for on-line shopping. The new configurable toolbar also shines. You can drag and drop the toolbar, toolbar links, and an address window next to, above, or below each other.

Microsoft may call Outlook Express a lightweight e-mail client and newsgroup reader, but it easily satisfies my needs, with IMAP4 support, HTML content editing and viewing, complex message-filtering rules, multiple mailbox support, and Secure Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (S/MIME) encryption and digital signatures.

NetMeeting 2.0 offers chats, digital whiteboards, application sharing, and both videoconferencing and audioconferencing, with broad support for open standards, multipoint conferencing, and LDAP directory access. A NetShow streaming-video demonstration showed a nice-looking but small video image. Personal Web Server takes advantage of Windows networking to let you easily publish content from your desktop with FrontPad, a decent little HTML editor.

There's barely room to list all the new features in the preview release I used, let alone those that didn't make the preview. There was plenty to convince me that Netscape's next offering had better be good to slow its loss of market share to Microsoft's Internet Explorer juggernaut.

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Product Information

Internet Explorer 4.0.................................Free   (Windows 95/NT 4.0)

Microsoft Corp.
Redmond, WA
Phone:    206-882-8080
Fax:      206-936-7329
Internet: 
http://www.microsoft.com

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Rating s

Technology        *****
Implementation    *****


Key:

***** Outstanding
**** Very Good
*** Good
** Fair
* Poor

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A Blurring of Desktop Edges

screen_link (47 Kbytes)

IE 4.0 meshes Web and desktop, with (for example) drag-and-drop installation of an ActiveX news ticfker in the menu bar (bottom).

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Pete Loshin is a technical editor for BYTE reviews and author of Extranet Design and Implementation (Sybex 1997). You can reach him at .