Microsoft beefed up the way IE handles errors by giving the browser its own Dr. Watson that responds to crashes and automatically links you to a fix or to an article on how to correct the problem. You can also report crashes to Microsoft--but don't expect a response. Eventually this might result in a fix being posted on the company's Web site, so the problem is probably worth reporting if you have a minute.
This release supports enhanced cookie management as well as the upcoming Platform for Privacy Preferences (P3P) standard. P3P enables users to control how their personal information is used by Web sites they visit. If this feature is turned on, a small flag icon appears at the bottom of your browser. The icon changes to reflect whether or not a site has a P3P-compliant privacy policy. What relevance this feature will have, though, will depend on the breadth of sites' adoption of P3P tagging.
All in all, this public preview provides a promising look of things to come for IE 6. We were impressed by the stability and speed (this beta was much more stable than the Netscape 6 beta), but were a bit disappointed by the meager ration of new features. IE 6 will be worth a look when released in its final form later this year, but don't expect it to have the same impact as its OS counterpart.
Internet Explorer 6 Public Preview
Company:Microsoft
Ph:13 20 58
Price: Free download
Requires:486/66 processor or better (Pentium recommended); 32MB RAM (16MB for Windows 98); 26MB hard drive space (12MB for Windows Me, 26MB for NT and 11MB for 2000); CD-ROM drive recommended; Microsoft Windows 98, Me, NT 4.0 (Service Pack 6a or later), 2000, or XP
Rating:
15%
7%
