 | ||
|
| ||
| ||
|
| ||
Nancy Winnick Cluts
Developer Technology Engineer
Microsoft Corporation
April 8, 1997
Updated: September 30, 1997
The following article was originally published in Site Builder Magazine (now known as MSDN Online Voices).
Okay, so why do another version?
The big -- the really big -- difference between Internet Explorer 4.0 and Internet Explorer 3.0 is the integration of the shell and browser.
With more people using the Web every day, it was only logical to explore some of the concepts that the Web has contributed to computer use, such as single-click navigation and the ability to combine descriptive text with objects that can be clicked on. Internet Explorer 4.0 was designed to take the rich, dynamic content delivery mechanisms of the World Wide Web and merge them directly into the shell. You get the best of both worlds when using Internet Explorer 4.0: the best Web browser and the best shell. Internet Explorer 4.0 provides the richness of Dynamic HTML plus an improved user interface.
When you run Internet Explorer 4.0, you no longer need to run a separate Internet browser to view content on the Web, because Internet Explorer 4.0 with the Active Desktop fully integrates the browser into the shell. With Internet Explorer 3.0, the browser just ran on top of the Windows 95 shell. Now, with Internet Explorer 4.0 and the Active Desktop, the Windows 95 shell is updated to include many enhancements to make Web browsing as easy as browsing a file folder. You can use Internet Explorer 4.0 to explore Web content as well as content that resides on the local machine. In fact, you even have Back and Next arrows at your fingertips.
Performance and compatibility were important design points for Internet Explorer 4.0. The whole idea was to have a product that allows users and developers to work with existing content using open industry standards. At the same time, it was important to ensure that developers aren't locked into any specific language, platform, or implementation. All of this needed to be done without sacrificing performance. A challenge, indeed!
Internet Explorer 4.0 provides a suite of components encompassing mail and news, conferencing, and support for rich media and streaming. Support for HTML, SMIME, LDAP, and NNTP are built in, so you can receive automatic mail-based notifications. You can interact with other members of your corporation via NetMeeting or chat. Finally, you can use Windows Media Technologies and ActiveMovie to view rich multimedia effects.
Internet Explorer 4.0 has a programmable cache that supports offline caching of content. You can receive notification of changes via e-mail or directly to your desktop via the tray or screen saver. Information is broadcast to your machine via an open architecture for sites, Channel Definition Format (CDF) files.
How does Internet Explorer 4.0 accomplish all of this?
HTML + scripting + components
Dynamic HTML extends HTML by supporting cascading style sheets (CSS), 2-D layout, and data binding. The Dynamic HTML object model makes it all programmable.
The scripting portion of the formula refers to any scripting language: JScript™, Visual Basic® Scripting Edition (VBScript), Rexx, perl, and others.
Finally, components refer to Java applets™, ActiveX controls written with languages such as Visual Basic or Visual C++®, etc.
The glue that holds all of this together is ActiveX. ActiveX does this via your favorite object model and mine: COM. COM provides the ability to expose programmable objects. Since COM has been around for a while, you can use any tool you like that supports COM to create your COM objects.
The Internet Explorer 4.0 Active Desktop, Start menu, and Taskbar are the user's home base for launching, switching, and staying informed about what's happening around them. When you put these together you, end up with a highly customizable "dashboard" for information from the Internet.
The Active Desktop was designed to give the user maximum flexibility, drawing on the strengths of current technologies to make information easier to find, receive, and organize. It provides rich, animated content via Dynamic HTML, language-independent scripting (including VBScript and JScript), support for components and applets, and seamless access to system services. It is an extensible platform that will be delivered cross platform (that's right, it will even run on Windows 3.1).
Imagine that you can tear off pieces of your favorite Web pages, then reassemble them together on your desktop. This is one of the capabilities of the Active Desktop. The Active Desktop is an extension of the existing desktop; but, instead of boring, static icons, you get dynamic links that show you up-to-the-minute summary information based on the content at the Web site.
You can add any HTML-based component to your desktop. These components will live right alongside your current desktop icons. These components can be any size or shape -- you aren't limited to a 32x32 icon. Since the components are HTML, they can contain anything that HTML supports: text, images, java applets, ActiveX controls, you name it. Components can automatically update their content via the Web. The contents of any URL can be open and live on your desktop (for instance, traffic maps, stock quotations, news headlines, sports scores, a corporate-intranet bulletin board).
From the Active Desktop you can launch Web addresses, as well as programs, via a new Address bar in the Taskbar. A new desktop button on the taskbar gives you quick and easy access to your desktop. On the screen there is also a new desk bar that contains links to your favorite Web sites. To add a link, simply drag and drop links to the desk bar. The Start menu has also been updated to contain your favorite Web sites (you can drag and drop your favorite site to the Start menu). You can rearrange the items in this list any way you want, as well as the rest of the items in the cascading Start menu.
A channel on your desktop is akin to a cable-television channel, a place where you can subscribe to view content from a Web site. The channels you choose are available to you via either the desktop or a button on the channel bar (a desk bar that contains the channels available to you). Channel content is cached offline so the content loads faster. Channels are designed using a format that Microsoft and several partners have proposed to the W3C as an open standard, so that you can view a channel on any browser that supports new open standards.
Along with channels, you can specify a desktop screensaver. This new screen saver is different from current screen savers in that the content displayed is not static. Instead, you view Web pages that have been cached offline. Another way to view offline-cached content is via the desktop ticker. This ticker is the perfect place to view small pieces of information such as sports scores, headlines, or stock prices.
When you install Internet Explorer 4.0 with the Active Desktop, you also get updates to the Windows 95 shell. One of the most noticeable changes in the shell is the ability to view Web content just as you would using a Web browser (that's because they are integrated, dontcha' know?). This means that you can single-click on a URL to launch a Web page, click on back and next buttons to navigate through Web sites, and view your Web favorites all from one window. The shell provides a thumbnail view (enabled by a property sheet) in the Favorites folder so that you have thumbnails of your favorite Web sites.
Another shell enhancement is the ability to provide a file specification that contains spaces in the Run dialog. It's been terrific to be able to name files with spaces, but if you tried to launch one from the Run dialog (without enclosing the entire string in quotation marks), you soon found out that the system stopped searching when it came on a space.
The Recycle Bin has been retooled to provide faster browsing and now maintains the folder structure of deleted items.
There is a new folder, the Downloaded ActiveX Controls folder, that lists the ActiveX controls you have installed on your system. If you open this folder in Details view, you will see a column indicating whether the ActiveX control is shared. If it is not shared and you no longer want the control on your system, you can assume that the control is safe to delete.
Nancy Winnick Cluts, developer-technology writer to the stars, has recently moved to a very toney neighborhood, but to us she'll always be that winsome gal next door.
For a comprehensive reference for developers and authors, check out -- and add to your Favorites list -- What's New in Internet Explorer 4.0 Final Release in the MSDN Online Web Workshop.
Lots more information on Internet Explorer 4.0 for end users, corporate IS officials, and the press is available at Microsoft's Internet Explorer product site
Make it a favorite
User info
.
For technical how-to questions, check in with the Web Men Talking, MSDN Online's answer pair.
Did you find this material useful? Gripes? Compliments? Suggestions for other articles? Write us!
© 1999 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Terms of use.
Back to top