Comments on: Comments on 9674

Post number 9674

mathowie — Mon, 27 Aug 2001 16:05:50 -0800

Internet Explorer 6 final is out for windows. Hopefully they've worked all the bugs out from the public beta. They're claiming full 100% standards support for DOM level 1 and CSS 1 (it only took five years!), though time will tell how accurate that claim is.

By: kokogiak

kokogiak — Mon, 27 Aug 2001 16:13:37 -0800

Downloading now, thanks Matt. I hope backward compatibility issues aren't a major headache. Sigh. Fingers crossed (for xml/xsl and .hta issues).

By: deftone

deftone — Mon, 27 Aug 2001 16:15:11 -0800

i hate how they don't let you download a zip or something so you can install it later. the wizard just starts installing.

By: chrisege

chrisege — Mon, 27 Aug 2001 16:28:54 -0800

awesome! i've been hearing about the standards compliance for a while now, and I'm really eager to try it out. any caveats, other than the disabled netscape-style plugins?

By: mkn

mkn — Mon, 27 Aug 2001 16:29:26 -0800

I'm assuming IE6 installs over IE5 ? Which is rather stupid and is holding me back from installing, because as a developer (ok, maybe not), I need to be able to test sites across all the common browsers - and with the slow adoption of new browsers/plugins, IE5 is still going to be around for a long time.

By: Mo Nickels

Mo Nickels — Mon, 27 Aug 2001 16:35:29 -0800

What's a really good, rich, cutting-edge-standards site to test it on?

By: jeffbarr

jeffbarr — Mon, 27 Aug 2001 16:36:42 -0800

Note that a certain number of the newest CSS features will be enabled only for pages with the proper DOCTYPE directive.

By: kokogiak

kokogiak — Mon, 27 Aug 2001 16:37:00 -0800

First impression - I hate the little blue-colored XP-flavored "e" icon everywhere, and the new "smart" 404 page isn't all that helpful at all - but it does have a blue line across the top (?). I'll probably get used to it. So far so good tho. And yes, mkn, IE5 appears to be swallowed up by IE6 now.

By: FunkyHelix

FunkyHelix — Mon, 27 Aug 2001 16:49:10 -0800

I always agonize over upgrading. It took me forever to download N6.1, because I was waiting for people to yay or nay it. IE6 users, any odd problems you can see? Is it significantly better, and worth tossing IE5 over?

By: Option1

Option1 — Mon, 27 Aug 2001 16:49:13 -0800

Like mkn, I'll have to put off d/l IE 6 until there's a greater percentage of users with it. I much prefer IE 5.5 over any of the versions of Netscape, but at least Netscape let's me install multiple versions.

By: Zootoon

Zootoon — Mon, 27 Aug 2001 16:52:32 -0800

Deftone I'm downloading it at the moment, but while I was customizing the setup, there was an advanced button which apparently lets you save it first before installing. If this turns out not to be the case, I'll post again once I've finished downloading.

By: kokogiak

kokogiak — Mon, 27 Aug 2001 16:55:46 -0800

I'd be glad to post a follow-up after a full day of hammering, but after an hour, I'd say it "feels" stable and seems to render pretty quick, esp. pages with fairly complex table structures. So far all my xml/xsl and .hta stuff works the same/slightly faster. (Emphasis on "so far") One thing to watch out for: if you count on a large image overflowing the screen, you're outta luck - IE6 now "auto-resizes" it by default, crunching it into available window space. Of course you can click it to get a little button to pop up and "expand" it to fullsize - or switch off a setting in the Advanced section of Internet Options. Not a huge deal, but I don't like it much.

By: transient

transient — Mon, 27 Aug 2001 17:01:08 -0800

Checking my own pages, IE 6 now shows things I've set as {display:none;} which 5.5 didn't...

By: geoff.

geoff. — Mon, 27 Aug 2001 17:04:52 -0800

I'm still on IE 5.01. Mostly because I do web design and need to be on the browser most people use. Don't expect wide spread 6.0 support till AOL upgrades or until everyone merges onto WinXP. I give it another 2-3 years before I'll finally be able to use standards.

By: moses

moses — Mon, 27 Aug 2001 17:05:40 -0800

Seems to work fine -- it does install directly over 5 though, unlike NS. Not a big deal unless you're a designer trying to compare what your site looks like on all browsers -- and even then it's a still not huge deal since it's not too much of a leap forward. Beats the hell out of Netscape though, that I am sure of. (Funny, the side bar matches this site, way to go mathowie! Perhaps MS owes you something.)

By: riffola

riffola — Mon, 27 Aug 2001 17:09:01 -0800

kokgiak: You can turn off the image resize, and image toolbars in Advanced Options.

By: lotsofno

lotsofno — Mon, 27 Aug 2001 17:09:53 -0800

hold up, the display:none css command doesn't work on IE6? bah, that's how i got NS 4.7 users to bug off! grrr... i'll have to wait for a day or two until i hear what everyone has to say, so make sure you guys post your gripes, warnings, and cool things you found! i'm not in so much of a rush to get the update, 'cause i have a bad feeling it's going to mess something up over here or my 128mb of RAM and 450mhz processer won't be able to handle it.. if it were an opera upgrade on the other hand, i'd probably be already downloading and running it.

By: mathowie

mathowie — Mon, 27 Aug 2001 17:15:03 -0800

David Baron's CSS test pages are some exhaustive test suites that you can use to run IE6 against.

By: dhartung

dhartung — Mon, 27 Aug 2001 17:15:25 -0800

deftone: To download for later installation (or to create, for example, a network install), do this: * Run IE6Setup.exe * Accept license agreement * Click "Install minimal, or customize" radio button * Click Next * Click Advanced * Click "Download Only" checkbox Granted, it's not stunningly obvious, but it is an option and it's been consistent since later releases of IE4.

By: kokogiak

kokogiak — Mon, 27 Aug 2001 17:18:07 -0800

riffola - thanks, but I thought that's what I said (bottom of comment). I was just disappointed that it's set to crunch huge images by default - seein as how end users almost never change their default settings. One other side note - I was browsing the 5k entries page in IE6, and everything looks centered within the tables (two columns in the white area, both centered within their tables) - I don't think it looks that way in IE 5, it was all left-aligned there.

By: mkn

mkn — Mon, 27 Aug 2001 17:25:11 -0800

I downloaded it on one computer here, and I'm really not finding any faults with it. i notice that there's some discrepancy with dhtml speed across sites - some seem to run a little more smoothly than before, and some chug more than before - but I think this might be more of a code issue than a browser issue... ? I think. Any idea about how IE6 reacts to bad code? I hadn't had the chance to try anything.

By: mathowie

mathowie — Mon, 27 Aug 2001 17:26:45 -0800

I've noticed a few sites have alignment problems, probably a div inheretance thing. Brig's site is aligning all her post text to the right. The strangest one is Steve's site. I'm sure he knows what he's doing but his divs look all messed up in IE6.

By: tomorama

tomorama — Mon, 27 Aug 2001 17:27:35 -0800

Rumor has it that all non active-x plugins (i.e. quicktime) will not work in IE6?

By: kokogiak

kokogiak — Mon, 27 Aug 2001 17:35:00 -0800

tomorama - from their FAQ: "Internet Explorer does not support Netscape-style plug-ins. However, Internet Explorer continues to support the Embed tag. Content creators can continue to use the Embed tag for components that are built on ActiveX® technologies, as has been the case since Internet Explorer 3. A few examples are the Flash and Shockwave products from Macromedia, as well as the SVG Viewer from Adobe Systems." Full FAQ here.

By: riffola

riffola — Mon, 27 Aug 2001 17:37:33 -0800

What strikes me as odd is if you try and install it in Windows XP (2535), it won't let you choose minimal or customise. Tomorama: Here's the thread about IE dropping support for non ActiveX plugins.

By: smaugy

smaugy — Mon, 27 Aug 2001 17:51:27 -0800

By: Fat Elvis

Fat Elvis — Mon, 27 Aug 2001 17:51:30 -0800

My biggest "gripe" with IE 6 is the restrictive privacy settings. Good on one hand, bad on another. In short, you get a little "eye" with a red slash at the bottom of your screen - telling you (when you click on it) that certain cookies (third party cookies especially) have been blocked or may be deleted at the end of your session. This breaks a lot of banner advertising schemes, including the one that I use at work to put ads on our business sites. The solution? Well, considering it's pretty hard to make a user "accept" your cookies ("To view and interact with the ads on this site you must move your security settings down to minimum!") you can instead set an HTTP header on your web server that specifies your P3P compliancy. http://www.w3.org/P3P/ has lots of information on this, but basically it comes down to: - Downloading a P3P policy generator (Java mostly) - Generate and XML, HTML and Compact Policy with it - Install (save) the HTML and XML policies on the server - Add an HTTP header to all web pages with the compact policy (Apache will do this easily to all pages on a server with one line)

By: sja

sja — Mon, 27 Aug 2001 18:12:25 -0800

Checking my own pages, IE 6 now shows things I've set as {display:none;} which 5.5 didn't... This display:none test renders perfectly. There's probably something wrong with your pages.

By: machaus

machaus — Mon, 27 Aug 2001 18:13:29 -0800

Everyone fearful of upgrading because of web testing they do may want to look into running virtual OSs with something like Connectix Virtual PC. They just released it for windows too. Why would you want to emulate windows on windows? Because you can keep seperate drive images and boot to them with the flick of the switch. No dual boot nightmares. Great for testing too. Scared that something might blow up your computer? Make a copy of your monolithic drive image, boot to it, install, and throw away the image away if it doesn't work.

By: smaugy

smaugy — Mon, 27 Aug 2001 18:39:40 -0800

Kris's Mini Review (Celeron 400, 1Gb RAM, Win2k): Pros:

A lot more responsive than IE5.01 (I refused to use 5.5)
Lock the toolbars! No more pissing around after you click the mouse too early, moving the Address or links bar and messing up your delicate balance of usability and aesthetics. (ahem...)
Block third-party cookies.
Media bar. I doubt I'll use it, but it's something to whither away the time, I suppose. It wants me to install the latest media player. Hmmmm nah.
I can finally enable passive mode FTP! I might have missed it in searching around the menus before, but still, alas!
It might be just me but Win2k seems to boot up a bit quicker - the GUI doesn't usually start to appear until after the ADSL modem has synced.
The menus (tools/options) is a lot quicker - I don't get pissed off with waiting just to change the proxy settings now.

Cons:

It fucks up my personal portal page that I spent ages doing. Humph. Maybe the content-type stuff isn't right. I dunno.
It still installs Outlook Express. Someday MS will realise that some people would rather not have OE installed.
If you use unordered lists in previewing a comment, does it usually go into the default font?
I don't know if this is related. Try to post a comment without using a proxy (I use Junkbuster). This comment won't post unless I go through Junkbuster. Strange. Maybe a Mefi coding bug? Probably just me, though. (Error Diagnostic Information An error occurred while evaluating the expression: form.post EQ "Post" Error near line 1, column 16. Error resolving parameter FORM.POST)

That concludes this mini review. Goodnight.

By: timothompson

timothompson — Mon, 27 Aug 2001 18:40:53 -0800

I found a visual walkthrough (didn't see one on the IE site).

By: lotsofno

lotsofno — Mon, 27 Aug 2001 18:44:12 -0800

thanks, kris.

By: smaugy

smaugy — Mon, 27 Aug 2001 19:11:09 -0800

Don't forget about the Mefi sidebar thingy.

And you can delete only cookies (I don't think you could do that before).

The "Email this picture..." & "Print this picture" right-click menu options. Gee, Bill, that must've taken weeks to code. It's a bit useless (for me, at least).

I guess the auto-resize picture thing is handy, too. All it needs now is an auto-retry for all the filepile "server overloaded" errors :-)

I haven't found anything else yet...

By: solistrato

solistrato — Mon, 27 Aug 2001 19:58:50 -0800

Well, it passes the Glassdog Test. But those new icons are just stoopid. And how the hell do I get it off my desktop again?

By: deftone

deftone — Mon, 27 Aug 2001 20:01:13 -0800

dhartung: After I accept the license agreement, I just get screen that says "Windows 2000 / Windows XP Install - 11.1 MB" and a Next button. Once I click on Next it connects and starts downloading. There are no radio buttons to select install minimal or customize. This must be a Windows 2000 thing.

By: smaugy

smaugy — Mon, 27 Aug 2001 20:09:33 -0800

Re. my comment about it screwing up my personal portal page: it was just my wibbly CSS that IE5.01 didn't mind :-) Also, as an added bonus, it seems to have speeded up Windows Explorer, too. I'm *sure* the tree view icons are a little further apart than normal. Everything just seems a bit more responsive. All in all, it seems well worth the worry that it could completely screw up your system :-)

By: wackybrit

wackybrit — Mon, 27 Aug 2001 20:11:03 -0800

kokogiak said: First impression - I hate the little blue-colored XP-flavored "e" icon everywhere, and the new "smart" 404 page isn't all that helpful at all - but it does have a blue line across the top (?). Wow! I'm an IE5 user and I got that 'upgrade' today too. Usually if I typed in www.fdshfdshjkfhsda.com I'd get a very plain thing that said 'Host not found' or such like.. But from today, I'm being subjected to the same stupid MSN page that IE6 users are. Thanks Microsoft for upgrading my IE5 automatically. (Okay, it's not that bad)

By: wackybrit

wackybrit — Mon, 27 Aug 2001 20:20:24 -0800

After 10 minutes of scouring Microsoft's site, I fail to find any information about the new Outlook Express. No screenshots, no feature updates, nothing. Outlook Express is the only reason I'd consider getting IE6.. is it any better than before?

By: lotsofno

lotsofno — Mon, 27 Aug 2001 20:44:01 -0800

i dunno about this new 404.. sure, it's a lot more colorful, but i was used to the simple old one.

By: MattD

MattD — Mon, 27 Aug 2001 20:45:08 -0800

Wackybrit: Outlook Express 6.0 appears to be exactly the same as Outlook Express 5.5, which was essentially the same as Ooutlook Express 5.0.

By: suprfli

suprfli — Mon, 27 Aug 2001 21:07:21 -0800

I just clicked through the install, and there wasn't an option to only download the files >:-\. It's probably a Windows 2000 thing, since the first screen said "typical Windows 2000/XP". Typical indeed. I found this out yesterday when trying ot dl ie5.5. I need to burn a copy of ie5.5 so when I go to locations w/a slow Internet connection I can simply install from the cd. When trying to download ie5.5 by itself it doesn't allow you. Apparently, this is the same issue when trying to download ie6.0. I think I found a fix though. If you download from a win98se machine it allows you to choose your options and which OS you are installing ie6.0 on. If you choose to download the full version for win2k/NT/ME it doesn't force you to upgrade w/no choice.

By: suprfli

suprfli — Mon, 27 Aug 2001 21:14:07 -0800

I just triple checked. If you run ie6setup.exe from a win98se machine and choose the Advanced/Download Only option it allows you to choose to download ie6 for win98/NT/Win2k & XP/Millenium. I guess this doesn't help if you don't have a win98 machine there but if you do download it and then burn it to a cd or install it over the network.

By: mrbula

mrbula — Mon, 27 Aug 2001 21:44:03 -0800

Time to add a new meta tag: <META HTTP-EQUIV="imagetoolbar" CONTENT="no">

By: kindall

kindall — Mon, 27 Aug 2001 22:52:46 -0800

I've installed IE6 on my Mac's Virtual PC running Windows 2000 and I don't notice that snazzy new 404 page or the XP-style buttons. It looks the same as IE 5.5 to me, although in the About box it does say it's 6.0. Whassup?

By: riffola

riffola — Mon, 27 Aug 2001 22:56:52 -0800

Don'tcha just love the "Is this copy of Windows legal?" under Help in Windows Explorer? From what I hear it's not just an XP thing, it does that for all OSes.

By: riffola

riffola — Mon, 27 Aug 2001 23:20:44 -0800

You could probably get the full install of IE 6 via IE Administration Kit (IEAK)

By: Apoch

Apoch — Mon, 27 Aug 2001 23:24:08 -0800

I'm running ME and I can't find the "Is this copy of Windows legal?" thing. And I didn't have to download and automatically install, or even install Outlook Express. In fact that check box was already unchecked.

By: suprfli

suprfli — Tue, 28 Aug 2001 00:26:03 -0800

ie6 looks like the same as 5.5. where are the snazzy buttons? i don't want them but at least would like to see them. is this a special XP feature? IMO, ie6 adds a bunch of features for newbies. one of the best additions ever made to ie was the print preview.

By: mb01

mb01 — Tue, 28 Aug 2001 03:01:19 -0800

it messed up my 'blog this!' right-click extension and for that, I hate it already. then it won't let me log in to the blogger forum. bah.

By: crayfish

crayfish — Tue, 28 Aug 2001 04:00:48 -0800

IE6 still seems to get the box model wrong.... grrr.

By: deanburge

deanburge — Tue, 28 Aug 2001 04:30:43 -0800

crayfish: "IE6 still seems to get the box model wrong.... grrr." Damn - I've been using build 2479 since it's been available and box is right in that. Why would they go and change it in final?

By: smaugy

smaugy — Tue, 28 Aug 2001 05:14:40 -0800

One other thing - the ftp functionality (ftp folder view) is still crap. When it works it's good, but when it just sits there waiting without the user knowing what the hell it's doing, it gets really annoying. It's just sat there now, playing dead. Is it frozen? Has it crashed? Is it waiting for a response from the server? I guess I'll never know. One day MS will make the task bar (which I believe is part of IE) more customisable. Despite being able to lock the IE toolbar, I can't do that with the taskbar. FTP still frozen.... hrmmmmmmmmm. Maybe I shouldn't try and log non-anonymously in passive mode. Hmm. Then again, sunsite.org.uk works. I dunno. Me stupid.

By: Mick

Mick — Tue, 28 Aug 2001 05:34:26 -0800

the drag bars on my toolbars are missing...I can't resize my google search bar :(

By: smaugy

smaugy — Tue, 28 Aug 2001 05:48:12 -0800

Mick: right-click and untick "Lock the Toolbars."

By: samsara

samsara — Tue, 28 Aug 2001 06:41:56 -0800

I just installed it, and was notified after rebooting that I needed to apply a critical update from 9/10/99. Must have been a really old file in there.

By: quonsar

quonsar — Tue, 28 Aug 2001 06:59:08 -0800

another disgusting piece of crapware from billborg. my mind boggles that so many leap to download the nasty thing. my opinion of mefites sags a bit more. never move to a new ms browser until its not new anymore. 5.01 for now and the foreseeable future. but of course, y'all pixel-pushin' designer types just gotta have it so you can learn to code around the latest set of incompatibilities.

By: zedzebedia

zedzebedia — Tue, 28 Aug 2001 07:05:49 -0800

How sad is this: I can't download IE6 at work because... my work computer's version of Windows is too old. GOD I LOVE SILICON PRAIRIE! Tee hee... tee hee hee haw... hee haw hee haw whooo! [insert Ric Flair dance]

By: ph00dz

ph00dz — Tue, 28 Aug 2001 07:12:30 -0800

I don't know if anyone else is dealing with this, but I'm in the process of sorting out our site's compact privacy statement right now. This is a cool feature, obviously, but it's kind of a pain for the short term...

By: tremendo

tremendo — Tue, 28 Aug 2001 07:47:29 -0800

> I've noticed a few sites have alignment problems, probably a div inheretance thing Tables inherit the text-alignment property of their parent container. It used to be that <td>s defaulted to left alignment, but now if you have a <table> inside a <td align="right"> then it's own table cells will default to right alignment. From the CSS enhancements page:

TABLE Elements Inherit Text Properties TABLE elements inherit the value of text properties from their parents. These properties include color, font-size, font-weight, font-style, font-variant, text-decoration, text-transform, letter-spacing, and line-height. With earlier versions of Internet Explorer, for all of the text properties of TABLE elements except the font-family property, set all text properties to the settings on the BODY element.

There are quite a few pages out there that do not align the way they're suppossed to. Mostly pages that have a fixed-width centered table.

By: Option1

Option1 — Tue, 28 Aug 2001 08:20:21 -0800

quonsar, I think all your post did was betray your prejudices. Certainly, those prejudices are so evident as to make your "review" redundant and valueless. Equally clear by your statement "y'all pixel-pushin' designer types just gotta have it..." is that you haven't read what the web designers here have said. If you had you would note that most of us haven't downloaded it yet because it writes over IE 5.x. Until I partition my HDD, or instal a virtual OS as suggested by machaus, I'll keep IE 5.5 (along with Netscape 6, 4.77, 3.0 and Opera 5) to test on.

By: endquote

endquote — Tue, 28 Aug 2001 10:33:05 -0800

Note that if you installed IE 5 with "IE 4 Compatibility," you had IE 5 and IE 4 running at the same time. IE 6 doesn't seem to let you keep IE 5 running, but it hasn't messed with my copy of IE 4. So now I have IE 4 and 6 on this machine, and 5.5 on one next to me. (In addition to the four versions of IE, five versions of NN, and two versions of AOL on the Mac next to that.)

By: fooljay

fooljay — Tue, 28 Aug 2001 10:50:38 -0800

I have an idea. Can someone go through this list and tell us if everything looks fine? Then we wouldn't all have to download it... :-)

By: wackybrit

wackybrit — Tue, 28 Aug 2001 14:43:02 -0800

Is there any way of getting IE6 without using the IE6SETUP downloader? I want to use my lovely Download Accelerator. My connection often dies (that's BT Internet for ya) and I want to use my resume.

By: smaugy

smaugy — Tue, 28 Aug 2001 17:36:13 -0800

Wackybrit, try this. I haven't got a f'in clue what these switches actually DO, but it seems to work fine. ie6setup.exe /c:"ie6wzd.exe /d /s:""#E"

By: kokogiak

kokogiak — Tue, 28 Aug 2001 23:10:37 -0800

smaugy - I have to say that my new favorite adjective is "wibbly" - thanks! (can't stop saying it in my mind wibbly-wibbly-wibbly)