Windows IE 6 final is out

So far, so good :)

Submitted by Spyder on August 28, 2001 - 03:30.

I installed IE 6 today and it has been nice and fast/stable so far... Time will tell though.

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Submitted by jobarr on August 28, 2001 - 03:40.

I've been using leaked builds for a while....Very stable and very fast =)

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initial grumbles

Submitted by xlabphil on August 28, 2001 - 06:52.

First impressions of IE6 seem okay in terms of speed and css/dhtml support but I've been less impressed by the decision to ignore native support for Netscape-style plug-ins, most notably the QuickTime plugin. Apple have been kind enough however to provide a workaround - http://www.apple.com/quicktime/products/tutorials/activex.html. The other problem I spotted was in rendering table cells. Without an alignment specified IE6 defaults to a center align, whereas the default alignment used to be left. Very annoying when you have to change several pages.

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re: initial grumbles

Submitted by deanburge on August 29, 2001 - 03:48.

>been less impressed by the decision to ignore native support for Netscape-style plug-ins Was ever part of HTML spec ?

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re: initial grumbles

Submitted by xlabphil on August 29, 2001 - 09:59.

Probably not, though can't understand why IE6 chose to drop it when it has been widely used since Netscape 3. I understand the need to follow standards but backward compatibility is also important.

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The quicktime thing

Submitted by rodneyreid on August 29, 2001 - 13:12.

The embed tag thing, like the Sun JVM exclusion, is the result of microsoft losing in court. The embed tag breaks some patent of a illinois(?) small software company. It will be interesting to see if this company will go after AOL/Netscape 6 next, forcing them to remove the embed tag from future netscapes (4.79/6.2) as well.

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Embed Tag

Submitted by Ikay on August 29, 2001 - 14:06.

Actually the embed tag works just fine so long as the appropriate ActiveX control is installed on the client machine. The purpose of using the object tag is so that the ActiveX control can be downloaded automatically.

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Java Virtual Machine

Submitted by StOne on August 29, 2001 - 23:28.

I’d been using the IE6 Public Preview for a few months, but downloaded the Final release anyway. At roughly 12.6 Mb it was about half the size of Netscape6.1 (which then needed the Java plugin) though Outlook Express 6 was also included.
Though IE (as stated on their page) does not support Netscape plugins, I didn’t need to redownload Java, as it left the Java Virtual Machine intact during the install. I understand that users without the JVM will be prompted to download it when they visit a Web page containing an applet, sort of like Netscape6.1 does if the Java plugin isn’t part of the initial install.
IE will overwrite older builds of itself during the install, unlike Netscape, but will keep whatever components it can use for the new install.
I haven’t noticed any significant differences between the Final release and the Preview version. For that matter, most of the differences between 6.0 and 5.5 appeared to be under the hood, along with a few gimmicks that might appeal to some users and which can easily be deselected if not wanted, like the Image Toolbar, Sidebar, etc.
It remains to be seen how soon IE 5x users will adopt IE 6, but I think it’s worth it if only because of all the security patches I had to get for 5.01 and 5.5. HOPEFULLY IE 6 won’t need any patching (so far, so good).

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Tables default center align

Submitted by fmt on August 30, 2001 - 04:52.

"Without an alignment specified IE6 defaults to a center align, whereas the default alignment used to be left." Funny, I haven't experienced this problem... maybe they've corrected it meanwhile...

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Lots of versions...

Submitted by paulnattress on August 30, 2001 - 06:21.

This new release has thrown up a problem that many people should be aware of.
Unlike Netscape, IE does not let you install multiple versions on the same machine. If you want to test your site in IE 3, 4, 5, 5.5 and 6 you'll need 5 machines.

I find this a major problem and any freelancers, consultants, small agencies, in-house teams or anyone on a tight budget will also have to find a workaround to this problem. If they can't then sites won't get tested on older browsers.

If there's an easy workaround to this - please share!

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Default Center Align Example...

Submitted by Spyder on August 30, 2001 - 07:09.

I wasn't aware of the center align default issue until I read it here but I did notice that some sites are still affected... For example try: http://php.weblogs.com/ I have stylesheets on my site and it seems to be ok still... Haven't had enough time to really look into it properly though.

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Still no .png support worth talking about

Submitted by cillian on August 30, 2001 - 07:14.

Mozilla supports the png image format, which is soooo much better than gifs. And not having a compatibility mode to facilitate testing on multiple browsers means I'll only have it on a test machine. Pleasantly dissapointed ( c:¦

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Default Center Align explained

Submitted by xlabphil on August 31, 2001 - 04:49.

Seems like the default alignment of a table cell remains left, though you can be thrown out if you have nested tables and the cells in the nested table do not have an alignment specified as they will inherit the alignment of the parent table cell.

I got this explainanation from jeff on the evolt list :

http://lists.evolt.org/archive/Week-of-Mon-20010702/161008.html

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Multiple Versions...

Submitted by .twitch on August 31, 2001 - 05:23.

Last I checked you could use multiple versions of IE still, but each one needs to be installed on a separate partition. Not a handy option for those of us with very little space, I know, but it's still a solution...

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png?

Submitted by nedrichards on September 1, 2001 - 02:53.

IE supports png too, either that or the navigation on my website is about to die... Oh, and as for the man who talked about the IE download being 1/2 the size of Netscape, this is true. Unfortuanatley. But if you want netscape without AOL then just get Mozilla! It's codebase is more recent too!

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RE: Multiple Versions

Submitted by CTMiller on September 14, 2001 - 19:53.

The whole multiple versions thing became such a pain that my company finally just ponied up and bought VMWare. Now we have one computer with several virtuals running on it and a truckload of RAM. Elegent? No, but it gets the job done.

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Deathknell for Doctype Declarations?

Submitted by cillian on September 27, 2001 - 07:23.

I can't find mention of this anywhere else, but IE6 has trouble with most of our framed sites and I think I just found out why:
If you have
1. a doctype (even <!DOCTYPE>!) declared in a page that's loaded into a frameset and
2. an image that's more than half the width of the frame
then IE6 seems to feel it should scroll horizontally!?

The doctype is what triggers the standards compatibility mode in the standards compliant browsers so I presume this is a bug :(
Unless anyone can find a workaround I'll need to go cutting the doctype out of all those sites I so enthusiastically added it to in the name of forwards compatibility!

Incidently, I haven't checked to see if it's a known bug, but Mozilla doesn't handle cells used for layout too gracefully either in compatibility mode (i.e. when there's a doctype declared). A cell with a height of 1 containing nothing but a transparent gif of height 1 behaves as though there is a <br> stuck in there as well!
Since this type of formatting is what has enabled us to use tables intended for tabular data as an effective means of positioning images and content in a page that actually works on most browsers and platforms, I hope it's not intentional!

Ever feel like we'd be better off doing everything in .swf?

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Submitted by r937 on October 2, 2001 - 06:24.

No.

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Table cell alignment

Submitted by fmireaux on September 27, 2002 - 05:57.

As I found here informations to help solving my problem, I will try to complete some previous comments about table cell alignment...

Here is a sample code to play with :

text


text


text

If you delete the "style" lines, the cell alignment is inherited unless you also delete the DOCTYPE line !

So you have too means to obtain the same view from IE5 and IE6 : suppress the DOCTYPE line or (better I think) add a style line for default table cell text alignement.

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Table cell alignment (2)

Submitted by fmireaux on September 27, 2002 - 06:05.

The "style" lines disappeared in my previous sample .... Here is the TD style to add :

<style type="text/css">
td {text-align:left}
</style>

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