I
E 5.5 Released!
The newest release of IE 5.5 fixes some old problems and developers get new features.
After much anticipation the final version of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 5.5 now released to the public. For the typical user IE 5.5 a new application such as Print Preview makes it easy to print from web pages. The biggest addition to Internet Explorer benefits the developer with the addition of more support for advanced languages like DHTML.
Browser Power
Built on the architecture of previous Internet Explorer browsers, IE 5.5 implements previous patches and updates from 5.0 making it more (secure and stable), robust features and flexibility from the new browser. IE 5.5 ships with increased support for DHTML and CSS.
The efficiency at which IE 5.5 handles frames has been
improved. Frames can now be used
without creating more than one instance of the browser. In the past every new frame that was
implemented was accomplished by hosting a new instance of the main browser
component. This updated allows for
increased performance.
Support for vertical text layout has been added. This is important to authors who develop
Chinese and Japanese content. In
addition, developers can now have pop-ups that render outside the browser,
scroll bars can be of any color, the zoom feature is user controlled, and
multimedia support has been slightly enhanced.
Internet Explorer 5.5 includes 128-bit encryption. The added security provides a very high
level of encryption that is intended to keep your personal information safe
from prying eyes when you visit secure web sites. The additional encryption can give you an added sense of
security, especially if you conduct e-commerce.
The most exciting feature to the end user is the print
preview function. Now you can see what
the printed document will look like and how many pages long it will be before
you commit to printing it. In the
preview release of IE 5.5 this option was flawed and the print preview looked
more like a screen capture than anything else.
From time to time it would include the scrollbar in the preview and
other times it would chop off the last few pixels on the right hand side if the
document. Microsoft has fixed these
bugs and the print preview works extremely well.
Microsoft’s System Requirements
·
A 486 with a 66 MHz processor (Pentium processor
recommended)
·
For Windows 95 or windows 98: 16 megabytes (MB) of RAM
·
For Windows NT 4.0 32(MB) of RAM running Service Pack 3 or
higher
·
For Windows 2000: 64 MB of RAM minimum
·
Modem or Internet connection