Internet Explorer 4 review

But it was the Web-style view that surprised me so much on first using IE 4. This changes the way you look at Windows, with files and folders now acting like hyperlinks on a Web page; you move your cursor over them to select them, then single click to launch. Individual folders are viewed as Web pages, including My Computer and Control Panel, and any folder you wish can be customised with your choice of background.

Most of these changes are simply cosmetic, and won't affect your browsing experience, which is the main reason you use a Web browser. However, they're important pointers to the future and to the look and feel of Windows 98. If you want an early look at the interface of next year, IE 4 is it.

Freebies, freebies everywhere

As mentioned earlier, IE has expanded significantly with this release to become more of a fully-fledged Internet suite. The extra components cover the key elements in today's Internet experience: mail, newsgroups, IRC chat and conferencing.

The all-in-one Outlook Express replaces the innocuously-named Internet Mail and Internet News. While in look and feel Outlook Express is similar to its big brother, the Office 97 component Outlook, in practice it's a tighter, slimmer program that really only shares the name. In use, Outlook Express looks similar to a Web page, complete with a Start page that lets you read mail, check your newsgroups and so on.

All the features you'd expect from a modern mail and newsgroup reader are here: SMTP, POP3, IMAP4 and LDAP support, digital signing and encryption, attachments in MIME and UUENCODE, spelling checker and hyperlink support. Also, Outlook Express supports the use of HTML in email, which lets you use stationery templates for messages, send Web pages by email and format messages using HTML tags. Outlook Express is a powerful program, although it's a little limited by being unable to receive any mail other than from POP3 or IMAP servers.

IRC chat and conferencing within IE 4 are handled by the tried and trusted components of Chat and NetMeeting. Chat 2 is little changed from the original Comic Chat, apart from improved IRC compatibility and some interface tweaks. Perhaps the most important change is improved integration with NetMeeting, which is also now on a version 2 release. It now has support for face-to-face videoconferencing, as well as traditional Internet phone functions, whiteboards and chat.

HTML authoring is now well supported throughout Microsoft's product range; from Publisher to Office, you can output HTML just about everywhere. IE gets an HTML author in the form of FrontPage Express, a cut-down version of FrontPage 97. It includes a Personal Home Page Wizard to get you started with a basic page, support for Java applets, JavaScript, Plug-Ins and ActiveX controls. FrontPage Express lags behind FrontPage 98 (reviewed, p208) in terms of power, but it's a decent enough wysiwyg editor for simple pages.

The final component of IE is so small it's almost unnoticeable: NetShow allows you to view live video and audio over the Web, streaming over any reasonable speed connection. It uses another new file format, in this case ASF (active streaming format), which Microsoft hopes will one day replace AVI and WAV files as the delivery format of choice. Additional software available from Microsoft lets you set up NetShow servers to broadcast content. In use, NetShow is quick with reasonable quality, audio and video, although it's not going to replace the TV or radio just yet.