Internet Explorer 4.0 Runs Cross-Platform

Nancy Winnick Cluts
Developer Technology Engineer
Microsoft Corporation

Updated: July 23, 1998
(new section: What Is Supported on Each Platform?)

Contents
Introduction
What Is Supported on Each Platform?
Supported on All Platforms
Add-On Components
What About Features That Aren't Cross-Platform?
32-Bit Windows Premium Features
Summary

Introduction

With Microsoft® Internet Explorer 4.0, a content author can easily create pages that run on all of the popular platforms in use today. That includes the 32-bit Windows® platforms (Windows 95, Windows 98, and Windows NT®), Windows 3.1, Macintosh®, and UNIX. Core Dynamic HTML (DHTML), scriptlets, and Channel Definition Format (CDF) support are among the features supported cross-platform in Internet Explorer 4.0. Support for these features makes your cross-platform content competitive with functionality provided by other popular browsers. Premium functionality, such as data binding through remote data service, multimedia controls, and extended Dynamic HTML support, is provided for 32-bit Windows platforms (Windows 95, Windows 98, and Windows NT). To download Internet Explorer 4.0 for all these platforms, see http://www.microsoft.com/ie/download/ .

In this article, I list some of the features available for all of the platforms I mentioned above, and include a section on enhancements available to anyone creating content specifically targeted to 32-bit Windows platforms.

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What Is Supported on Each Platform?

I think that the best way to illustrate this is by a table. The legend for the table below is as follows:

Y = Yes
N = No
B = Buggy in Beta 1
E = Supported with noted exceptions

Internet Explorer 4.0 Cross-Platform Support

Feature	Win32	Windows 3.1	UNIX	Macintosh
Dynamic HTML	Y	Y	Y	Y
Dynamic HTML Object Model	Y	E - clearRequest method	B - events E - dynsrc property	B - events E - textRange
Data binding via TDC	Y	Y	Y	Y
Data binding via XML	Y	Y	Y	Y
Data binding via RDS	Y	N	N	N
Cascading style sheets (CSS)	Y	E - @fontface and filter	E - fonts (see below)	Y
Visual Basic® Scripting Edition (VBScript)	Y	Y	Y	N
Scripting of Java applets	Y	Y	Y	N
Multimedia Filters & Transitions	Y	N	N	N
Multimedia Class Libraries with DirectX®	Y	N	N	N
Multimedia objects	Y	Y	E - BGSOUND	Y
Netscape Navigator properties	Y	E - browserLanguage, onLine, userProfile B - userLanguage, systemLanguage	Y	Y
CDF	Y	Y	Y	Y
Java VM, AFC & JDK 2.01	Y	Y	Y	Y
Internet Connection Wizard	Y	Y	N	Y
Outlook Express	Y	Y	Y	Y
Offline Browsing	Y	E - page-hit logging	E - page-hit logging	E - page-hit logging

As you can see, the table above isn't very large. You can do almost everything on the different platforms. The only significant difference between the level of support for the different platforms are for the multimedia DirectX class libraries, and transitions and filters. There is still some work to be done with respect to events and the object model.

CSS1 and CSS positioning are supported cross-platform. One exception to CSS support is that the @fontface and filter properties are not supported on Windows 3.1 or UNIX. There are also a few exceptions to font support using Internet Explorer 4.0 on UNIX. The Verdana, Arial, and Sans Serif fonts will be mapped to the Helevetica font. The Marlett font is not supported on UNIX. Internet Explorer 4.0 maps fonts to an equal or smaller point size. This may sound like a lot of exceptions, but Internet Explorer 4.0 for UNIX passed 81% of the CSS compatibility tests.

In case you'd like to see a comprehensive list of CSS support on the different browsers, check out http://style.webreview.com/mastergrid.html . This Web site lists exactly what CSS features are supported for Internet Explorer (versions 3.02 and 4.01), Netscape Navigator (version 4.04) on Win32®-based systems, and the Macintosh.

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Supported on All Platforms

If you are interested in creating content that employs CSS positioning, DHTML Dynamic Styles, or offline browsing for Internet Explorer 4.0, you can rest assured that this functionality will work across all of the popular platforms I've listed above.

DHTML and CSS

Dynamic HTML (in the Workshop, go to DHTML, HTML & CSS) enables you to change the styles and text on a Web page, animate an element on the page, and cache data locally so you can manipulate it without going back to the Web server. In fact, it's so cool that the whole section of Web Workshop is dedicated to providing overviews, technical articles, samples, and FAQs to answer your questions and help you create content using DHTML. DHTML supports the use of CSS, which provides the ability to apply styles (such as fonts, colors, or spacing) to a Web page. All CSS1 core features are supported in Internet Explorer 4.0, as is CSS positioning. Read Cascading Style Sheets in Internet Explorer 4.0/workshop/author/css/css-ie4.asp to get the whole skinny on the CSS features that are available in Internet Explorer 4.0.

Here's a handy-dandy list of the DHTML features that are supported across the popular platforms:

• HTML 4.0 support . Internet Explorer 4.0 fully supports the HTML 4.0 specification.
• Full support of CSS1 core features enables you to alter the style of text.
• CSS positioning enables you to set 2-dimensional placement of objects.
• The DHTML Object Model exposes all elements on the page so the elements can be manipulated by script.
• The Event Model enables you to program your page to respond to user-initiated events.
• The Style Sheet Object Model enables you to program style sheets.
• Dynamic Styles enable you to change any CSS attribute (such as the color, size, or style) for text on a page without waiting for the screen to refresh.
• Core Dynamic Content enables you to change the words, pictures, or multimedia on a page without that round trip to the Web server. Dynamic HTML exposes properties (innerHTML, outerHTML, innerText, outerText) that enable you to insert, change, or remove text from an already-loaded document.
• Extended Dynamic Content provides finer granularity when changing the content in your HTML document after it has been loaded (through textRange). More detailed information on dynamic content can be found in the Workshop (go to DHTML, HTML & CSS). Note that Internet Explorer 4.0 for the Macintosh does not support the textRange feature.
• Data Binding enables you to present data from a tabular data file on your Web page. Once downloaded to the client, this data is cached so the user can re-sort or filter it without having to go back to the server and reload the page.
• Scriptlets enable you to use Web pages authored in HTML and script as components.

Channels

Active Channel™ technology provides a medium that enables you to notify your customers of the latest information you have to offer them. You can create Active Channel content (in the Workshop, go to Content & Component Delivery) in Internet Explorer 4.0 by using a Channel Definition Format (CDF) file. With Active Channel technology, users can subscribe to your content, receive notification when new content is available, and even read the content offline, thus freeing up the line for more important things (like 1-900 numbers). General CDF support and subscriptions, notifications, and offline reading are all supported across the popular platforms.

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Add-On Components

Aside from DHTML and channel support, Internet Explorer 4.0 offers support for other components. The following components are supported on most platforms. This list gives you an idea of what is (and is not) supported on particular platforms:

• Java Virtual Machine, Application Foundation Classes (AFC), Java Developers Kit (JDK) support (JDK 1.02 supports Internet Explorer for 16-bit Windows)
• Internet Connection Wizard (except on UNIX)

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What About Features That Aren't Cross-Platform?

In addition to the features that are supported across platforms in Internet Explorer 4.0, there are some features that degrade gracefully (I just love that phrase) on some of the platforms. In short, the user won't miss it. These features include:

• CSS Filters and Transitions -- On some platforms, content that has a filter or transition applied to it will simply be displayed without the effect.
• Font Download -- If a platform does not support font download, the specified font will be substituted by another font already on the machine.
• User Profile Object Model -- Internet Explorer 4.0 supports Privacy and Profiling on the Web. This has been submitted to the W3C and the text for the proposal can be found at http://www.w3.org/TR/NOTE-Web-privacy.html . If a platform does not support this feature, it will appear as though the user has disabled it.

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32-Bit Windows Premium Features

It's just terrific to provide support for lots of features across platforms, but we've added some special features for our special friends who are running on 32-bit Windows platforms (Windows 95, Windows 98, and Windows NT). In the future, support for these features may be added to additional platforms based on customer demand.

The premium features you can use when running on a 32-bit Windows platform include:

• Multimedia controls (in the Workshop, go to Streaming & Interactive Media) -- DirectAnimation™ controls provide access to many of the DirectAnimation scripting functions and libraries. Using these controls, you can provide impressive vector graphics, images, and animated content over the Web with minimal code and brief download times. irectShow™ controls provide the ability to play back multimedia streams over the Internet. This means you can embed movies and sound into your Web pages.
• Data Binding (in the Workshop, go to DHTML, HTML & CSS, Data Binding, and Data Access & Databases, Remote Data Service) -- Remote Data Service is a high-performance Web-based technology that provides ODBC-based database connectivity and corporate data publishing capabilities for your Internet and intranet applications.
• Active Channel Content: Page-hit logging (in the Workshop, go to Content & Component Delivery, Hit Logging API) -- Page-hit logging collects information for Web publishers on activity for channel pages. It logs page hits in the browser, screen saver, and Active Desktop™ interface in both offline and online modes. The time and date that channel pages were loaded into the browser can also be logged.

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Summary

Internet Explorer 4.0 gives you plenty of features that will run on Windows 3.1, the Macintosh, UNIX, Windows 95, Windows 98, and Windows NT. Visitors to your Web site won't have to miss out on your content created using DHTML, and they will be able to subscribe to and view your channel content as well.

Those of you creating content to run on Windows 95, Windows 98, or Windows NT can take advantage of extra features (such as channel screen savers, remote data service, and multimedia controls) that run on these platforms.

As you can see, Internet Explorer 4.0 offers many new features to spice up your Web site and help you provide more interactive content for guests to your site.