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Pastimes : Computer Learning -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Doug Coughlan who wrote (11336)	8/19/2000 7:37:44 PM
From: thecow	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 110653

For IE5.5 users...from winmag newsletter winmag.com Internet Explorer 5.5 Issues Every time a new version of Internet Explorer comes out, a whole bunch of people download and install it, and their PCs come down with some sort of malady. I want to know about your experience with IE 5.5. Did it install just fine for you (as it did for me)? Or did you run into major or minor problems? Send me the details either way I have already received quite a few messages from people with mostly minor problems after installing IE 5.5. Some of them are very odd, quirky behaviors. Browser windows that won't close or minimize. Printing issues. Missing interface features. The worst of these problems, and where there clearly appears to be some sort of trend, is poor performance, both concerning the initial load time of the browser itself, and also subsequent Web page loading. The blizzard of other problems I've heard about are mostly minor, but they are annoying. You should never "upgrade" your browser and then find out that things are worse than they were before. I've seen all kinds of advice around the Internet for handling the IE 5.5 upgrade. Some pundits claim you should install the latest IE 5.01 service pack, which is detailed and downloadable from Knowledgebase Article Q261268: Description of Internet Explorer 5.01 Service Pack 1. Well, OK. I doubt it will hurt anything to do that. On the other hand, my experience tells me you're better off uninstalling anything Internet Explorer that Windows lets you uninstall before you upgrade to a new version. Not everyone can uninstall the current version of Internet Explorer, though. And I'm not just talking about Windows 98 SE users, whose operating system installs IE 5.0 by default. Many people find that IE 5.0 is not uninstallable, for example. That's OK. And, in that setting, installing the IE 5.01 Service Pack is a probably a good idea. For more on IE 5.01 Service Pack 1, please see Dave Methvin's Hot Fixes article on the subject. Expect Problems I'd like to leave you with a final thought for this week on the subject of Internet Explorer: Expect problems. Microsoft considers any IE update to be an opportunity to patch Windows itself -- a practice I find appalling. Because the company barely beta tests these patches at all. What's more, Microsoft hasn't added any user-oriented feature to IE in more than a year that's been worth your time and effort. The single best new feature in IE 5.5 is probably full support for CSS1 (Cascading Stylesheets 1). You don't need the latest, greatest version of Internet Explorer just yet. Whether you know it, you're an unwitting beta tester, in my opinion, when you download and install IE 5.5. Somewhere along the line, the computer industry and the press have to start telling the full truth about the endless parade of insipid new versions that comes along. I made a commitment a couple of years ago to be doubly sure I wasn't recommending something that was unnecessary. This one falls into that category. Unless you're a Web developer, hang back until the problems shake out. Because there are always problems with new software. And who needs problems? tc