Movement In The World Of Browsers

Action on the browser scene covers at least 3 upcoming releases, so to keep you up to date, here is some recent browser news.

Microsoft's IE 5.5 is set for release with key new features including CSS for vertical text, scrollbar coloring, zooming & shrinking of elements/divs, SMIL boston animation module (referred to as html+time2 by Microsoft), and better XSL and CSS support than IE5/Win.

For Mozilla fans, M16 (the most recent milestone) has been released. Code from Mozilla will be the core of Netscape 6, and the latest developments are that it is "feature complete", and PNG opacity works.

Slightly less known, but still popular, Opera is heading towards its 4.0 beta 5 release. Additions are Javascript 1.3, XML, HTTP 1.1, WML, and more compliant CSS1/2.

Finally, AOL 6 is in preview and apparently uses both IE and Netscape rendering engines interchangably. Also neon is a new beta browser from XL Digital Software which seems like it has its own rendering engine (unlike Neoplanet or AOL).