Another Look at Internet Explorer 4.5

Jan 19, 1999

To begin with, I won't try to hide the fact that I'm partial towards Netscape Communicator. Not because it isn't a Microsoft product, but because I still think that despite its memory-gorging propensity, it's still pretty much a toss-up between Communicator and Microsoft's newest offering to the Macintosh browser market. As I started to write this, I promised myself I would try to be as objective as possible to give the new Explorer the opportunity it deserves to prove its worth. Having said that, here, in no particular order, are my thoughts:

So what happened was I downloaded the Explorer package (sans Outlook Express) the other day from Download.com, all 8.9MB of it. I'd been sufficiently impressed by the demo of IE 4.5 when it was launched during Steve Jobs' MWSF keynote the other week, and by MacTimes columnist Charles Moore's previous reviews in Nov and Dec '98. I mean, if a product is truly great, you've got to cast aside your prejudices, right?

The first thing I did after having downloaded the new browser was to install it. Just drag the Internet Explorer folder into your hard disk and that's it. Very cool.

As it turned out, it wasn't so cool after all. What Microsoft has done was simply to divide the installation routine into two parts. The first part was what I had described above. Then, when you click on what you think was the alias to the browser application itself, it starts up a "first-run" routine which completes the rest of the installation process, loading a whole bunch of files and folders into your Extensions, Preferences, Fonts, and System folders, before automatically restarting your Mac. Not quite the 10 seconds that Microsoft's Ben Waldman claimed it would take to install IE 4.5 in your machine during the launch at Macworld. But this is a minor point, because you only go through it once. (It's just once, right?)

For those interested in knowing exactly what Internet Explorer 4.5 loads into your hard disk, (and exactly what you can afford to trash should you ever decide to revert to Communicator) here's the list:

IN YOUR HARD DISK:

Internet Explorer 4.5 Folder containing:

• Internet Explorer 4.5 (the browser application itself)
• An alias to IE 4.5, which you could probably place inside your Apple Menu Items folder for easy access
• Microsoft Internet Self-Repair folder (containing the "self-healing" application called Microsoft Internet First Run)
• Help folder (containing 2 folders and 16 html files)
• Plug-ins folder (replace the QuickTime plug-in ver 1.1.1 with the newer QuickTime plug-in ver 2.0.1 if you're using QuickTime 3 software)
• Internet Explorer License file
• Read Me file

IN YOUR SYSTEM FOLDER:

• MS Preference Panels folder (containing 22 files)

IN YOUR EXTENSIONS FOLDER:

• ActiveX Controls folder (containing 1 file)
• Indeo® Video extension
• Intel Raw Video extension
• Microsoft Component Library extension
• MS Font Embed Library (PPC)
• MS Library Folder (containing 11 files)
• Text Encoding Converter v 1.3.1 (NOTE: This is the one file you need to keep even if you trash the other Explorer files.)

IN YOUR PREFERENCES FOLDER:

• Explorer folder (containing 1 folder and 5 files)
• MS Internet Cache folder (containing the cache.waf file)

IN YOUR FONTS FOLDER:
IE 4.5 places these font suitcases into your Fonts folder:

• Andale Mono
• Arial
• Arial Black
• Comic Sans MS
• Courier New
• Georgia
• Impact
• Times New Roman
• Trebuchet MS
• Verdana
• Webdings

The AutoComplete feature (available since IE 4.0) is impressive. Similar to Communicator's Smart Browsing and Internet Keywords combination of features, it's able to second-guess the URL you're keying in even before you complete it. The first time I tried it, I was a little spooked when IE 4.5 autocompleted the relatively lengthy URL of a site I had visited before, when all I typed in was the word "boston". (Incidentally, the URL that IE 4.5 called up was Boston Globe's Hiawatha Bray's recent article entitled "Blunders and brilliance".) Apparently, it must have retrieved the information somehow from Communicator's cache or history, because that would be where I last visited the site from, weeks ago. Alternatively, it could have been called up by Explorer totally at random, but a URL that's four folders deep?

The AutoFill Forms feature also looks particularly useful, although I've not seen it in action yet. Incidentally, I came across this Mac OS World review which voiced concerns over whether the AutoFill entries you make could inadvertently be retrieved from your computer without you knowing it. A thought that is as interesting as it is mildly disturbing.

The "Go" button to the right of the URL window sticks out like an afterthought, but nevertheless serves a useful function if you're the sort who would rather click your mouse than the Return key, like me.

Scrolling is still sticky with IE 4.5, not as smooth and responsive as with Communicator. I find the screen flicker which occurs when scrolling a little distracting. A minor cosmetic point.

The best thing IE 4.5 (and its predecessors) has to its advantage is the ability to remember sites previously visited. One wonders when Netscape will eventually realize that this is a very important feature to have. The other great feature of IE 4.5 (and 4.0) is the ability to download webpages as complete self-contained archives, so that dowloaded pages can viewed offline exactly as they would appear online — complete with images and/or sound — when the archived page is called up from your hard disk. Without this feature, some downloaded webpages that have not been designed with this consideration can be rendered totally unreadable if background textures or images are missing.

The integration of Sherlock into IE 4.5 is a good thing in as far as Sherlock's usefulness is being tapped from within the browser, and that may have put IE 4.5 one up over what Communicator 4.5 has to offer.

There are other cosmetic aspects of IE 4.5 that concern me more from the viewpoint of web design. It certainly interpretes some common HTML codes differently from Communicator, which is why there may be subtle differences between the way this page looks in Communicator and in Explorer. Plus there are some simple HTML tricks and workarounds I've learnt that work fine in Communicator but not in Explorer, which seems to be less tolerant. And Explorer doesn't render certain textures well (which one might use for backgrounds) whereas Communicator has no problems in that area. If you'd like to see what I mean, visit this particular page in one of my other websites: AdForce Online. The copper-toned background texture is faithfully rendered in Communicator, but color distortion occurs when the page is viewed in Explorer. Conversely, certain background patterns proprietary to Microsoft's FrontPage web-authoring application show no perceptible change when screen color is reduced to thousands, but these same patterns appear dithered in Communicator with colors set to thousands.

One good thing is IE 4.5 is much leaner than its predecessor — and much, much leaner than Communicator. But then Communicator comes integrated with its Messenger email client and Composer web-authoring tool. Still, the savings on memory space hasn't exactly translated to a marked difference in browsing speed over Communicator, at least not on my Power Mac 8500 with a Teleport Platinum modem (33.6K). Perhaps I also need to figure out why this is so, since I've read about how nippy IE 4.5 is, even when compared to Netscape Navigator 2.02.

Being able to drag an image right off the browser window in IE 4.5 and onto your desktop or any folder is pretty neat, especially when a thumbnail is created in the process. This is the fastest way you can save any image (as opposed to click-holding the image, selecting Download Image to Disk, yadda yadda yadda), so you ought to use this method to save time. This feature has however been available in Netscape browsers since Navigator 2.02, albeit without the thumbnail, so it's nothing really new. With IE 4.5, a ghost image appears when any image is being dragged off the browser window, although it still eludes me as to what useful purpose this serves. Still, like the translucent icons that you drag across your desktop, it's a nice touch.

Another cue that Communicator ought to take from IE 4.5 is the ease with which you can edit your bookmarks in IE 4.5. With Communicator, the extra couple of steps are a hassle, relatively speaking.

I've not tried IE 4.5's much-lauded "print-off-the-web" capabilities yet, but I trust that the praises are well-deserved.

Unlike Moore's assessment, I still think the humble Navigator 2.02 is the nippiest browser of the lot. The difference in speed is most telling when comparing IE 4.5, Communicator 4.5, and Navigator 2.02 under modest RAM conditions (like 16MB) with Virtual Memory enabled. This is why, till today, I still use Navigator 2.02 to do 90 per cent of my casual browsing. Because the only thing I know that can bring Navigator 2.02 down on its knees is bad javascript. Otherwise, it's never failed me.

Have you ever needed to look into your browser's cache folder to retrieve a particular file? Well, with Netscape browsers, you can. Although the files you'll find inside would have cryptic-sounding names like cache123456.html or cache7654321.jpg, at least you know what kind of files these are from the extensions. And by peeking into Communicator's Page Info (under the View menu), you could actually identify the local cache file of any particular web page.

With Internet Explorer, you can't do that. Why? Because in Explorer, all web pages visited are cached into one big file called cache.waf, which is found inside the "MS Internet Cache" folder in your Preferences folder. In addition, the moment you start up Explorer, the cache.waf file that's created instantly occupies the maximum disk space it's been given, depending on how much disk space you have allocated to your cache (the default is 5MB).

I can't say I've covered everything here, although I daresay I've touched on most of the interface-related issues which invariably invite comparisons between both major browsers. "Use the browser you're most comfortable with" would be my best advice to anyone. But you owe it to yourself to experiment with both before deciding on which you prefer. As for me, I've got to switch between the two to see how this website looks in either browser. And so far, Communicator's come out tops.:-)

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