Perhaps the most highly-anticipated, mass-appeal product since it was announced, Internet Explorer 5.0 has finally arrived more than a year after Microsoft delivered the equivalent version number to Windows users. With an array of new and improved features, Microsoft hopes that IE 5.0 will allow it to dominate the Mac browser scene, at least for now.
Internet Explorer 5.0 boasts a radical new interface that incorporates many Mac OS X styling features, including a ribbed texture, Aqua-like buttons, and some nice touches of transparency. Additionally, nine browser colors are available for matching IE 5.0 to the color of your Mac. Fans of Kaleidoscope and other user-interface-altering extensions may be disapointed that IE 5.0's UI scheme supercedes those alterations, as will those who simply prefer a more traditional look.
Tasman-ia
Under the hood is where you'll find Internet Explorer 5.0's most compelling new feature: a brand new rendering engine dubbed "Tasman." Tasman aims to help narrow the gap in browser performance between Macs and PCs, and certainly succeeds in doing so. Informal testing found Internet Explorer 5.0 to generally be 25-50% faster than version 4.5 at rendering pages, with that figure increasing several times more for large tables, which seemingly snapped onto the screen as data was received. Internet Explorer 5.0 is still noticeably slower than a Windows-based PC using the equivalent software, but it does close the gap by a significant margin.
The Tasman engine is also the first Mac web browser to render pages at a default-setting of 96 dpi, as opposed to the standard 72 dpi screen resolution. 96 dpi rendering is standard on the PC, and the smaller resolution is responsible for most of the sites out there whose fonts appear too small on a Mac, although for the majority of pages the difference in resolution won't matter. By default Internet Explorer 5.0 curiously uses a 16-point font size, something that most uses will set back down to the more traditional 12-point.
For all its benefits, the Tasman engine isn't perfect, however. As a result of its strong support for standards, some pages that previously rendered fine under version 4.5, and any other browser on any other platform, may be reformatted with unwanted gaps or other anomalies. While less-than-perfect coding of pages per the specified doc type is responsible for this, it's a shame the IE 5.0 can't compensate for some of the errors and in turn render the page properly. Similarly, web designers may be disappointed to find that their own sites must be recoded to WWWC standards for proper viewing under IE 5.0.
Internet Explorer 5.0's other completely new features include the Scrapbook and Auction Tracker. Building off of the application's Web Archive saving feature, which allows an entire site to be downloaded to one file for easy off-line viewing, the Scrapbook allows you to quickly and easily save the entire contents of a page. Its title is then added to Scrapbook tab in the Explorer bar, and clicking on the title results in the saved page being loaded in the main portion of the browser, where a convenient information bar slides down from the top of the window with the original page's URL and the date the scrapbook file was created. This is especially practical for maps and other pages that are needed for short-term, off-line viewing.
The Auction Tracker is Microsoft's answer for users who want to easily keep a tab on auctions that they're interested in or find themselves frequently forgetting when an auction ends or if they've been outbid. Specific auctions from all the major houses can be tracked with a simple keystroke, and can be configured to alert you when you've been outbid or a certain amount of time before the auction closes.
The Media Bar, a feature that allows audio and video, including MP3s and QuickTime media, to be played directly within the browser didn't make it into the final version of Internet Explorer 5.0 for "legal and administrative" reasons, Microsoft says. The feature, which Microsoft actively demonstrated, was included until the end of the beta testing and Microsoft hopes to add the feature in the near-future.
Nip and tuck
As can be expected, Internet Explorer 5.0 contains a number of refinements over the previous version to make browsing a more enjoyable experience. The Explorer bar now extends down the entire left side of the browser window, effectively becoming part of the window itself and in the process reducing the awkwardness in appearance of this unique feature.
Full-screen browsing is also finally both effective and easy to do. Hitting Command-B or clicking the arrow at the top of the Explorer bar, slides the toolbars away to the left side of the screen. If the Explorer bar is on, basic forward/back/stop/reload commands are still accessible, although the status bar at the bottom of the screen disappears when the toolbars are collapsed, making it impossible to check on the loading status of a page.
When the toolbars are collapsed, hitting Command-L causes the URL bar to slide down from the top of the screen. Once a URL is entered, the bar then slides neatly away again. The URL bar itself has also been vastly improved. The auto-complete feature has been extended to produce a drop down listing of all the pages that contain the characters you've entered, making it much easier to get to you're intended page without typing many characters.
Also finally added is the ability to navigate links on a page from the keyboard using the tab and return keys. You can also select an item in a pull-down menu by typing the characters of its label, allowing you to enter your state, for example, without having your hands leave the keyboard. The auto-fill feature, however, continues to be unable to select items in a pull-down menu.
While Internet Explorer's Sherlock integration remains, the Explorer bar's search feature has been seemingly stumbled, forcing the search to first be executed through Microsoft's MSN search engine, and then requiring you to manually select another search engine if desired.
The bottom line
Microsoft has once again succeeded in raising the bar for web browsers by implementing a handful of unique and well thought out features. The competition will be hard pressed to one-up Internet Explorer 5.0.
