• Vision and Design Goals
• Internet Explorer5.0 in business
• Simplified Web Experience
• Bringing IntelliSense to the Web
• Money saver
• Deploying and managing Web-based applications
• Navigation and user interface enhancements
• Working the way users want

Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.0 (IE5.0) is the latest version of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer browsing technologies. IE5.0 works to best save users time on the things done most often on the Web: search, type URLs, add and organise favourites, and share information with others. IE5.0 lets users easily take advantage of everything that the Internet has to offer by focussing on four key areas: simplicity, automation, flexibility and performance. Discussing this new version, Neil Laver, Internet Product Manager, Microsoft said: "Consumers now have fast and simple access to all the Internet has to offer, from information and commerce to communication. IE5.0, in conjunction with the Internet Explorer Administration Kit (IEAK), offers businesses of all sizes an easy and powerful way to customise, deploy and manage client browsers."

Vision and Design Goals

The growth in popularity of the Web and its quick evolution from a simple medium for viewing static content to a rich platform for document publishing, collaboration, multimedia, commerce and more has been nothing short of spectacular. Browsing software played a key role in this growth by continually providing new features that appealed to users and supporting new technologies that could be utilised by Web authors. To identify new user needs as well as areas where current solutions did not perform to the degree customers demanded, Microsoft embarked on an extensive customer research and usability testing program immediately after the release of Internet Explorer4.0. The feedback was used to determine the design goals and priorities for IE5.0.

Internet Explorer5.0 in business

IE5.0 offers a premier browsing solution for businesses interested in increasing productivity and reducing cost of ownership. Corporations are adopting IE5.0 to take advantage of its unmatched ease of use and stability, powerful deployment and management tools, and its support for rich intranet application technologies. Corporations in a wide range of industries from pharmaceuticals to finance are building intranet applications based on standards-based technologies supported in IE5.0 and are customising and deploying IE5.0 via the Internet Explorer Administration Kit.

Simplified Web Experience

IE5.0 allows users the luxury of spending their time more productively on the Web.

• Simpler interface. - The IE5.0 interface has been streamlined to make it more intuitive.
• Customisable tool bars. - Users can arrange, add or remove toolbar buttons as they wish.
• Search Assistant. - The IE5.0 Search Assistant gives users quicker, more accurate Web search results by optimising the use of a variety of search engines.
• Related links. - With a single click, users can now easily add favourites, organise them, and make them available for offline viewing.

Bringing IntelliSense to the Web

IE5.0 includes Intellisense in the core architecture of the browser that automates the most common tasks. IntelliSense technology simplifies tasks such as searching, making it easier for users to search for the information they need as well as to redirect searches to the search engines they prefer. The complexity of maintaining and getting back to sites the user visits frequently, has also been reduced by making improvements to Favourites and History. These types of improvements to the core browsing tasks make the user’s Web experience easier and more positive.

In the workplace the browser has become a key application in completing day-to-day activities. With IE5.0, Microsoft provides the flexibility to use the browser in the way that best suits users’ needs. With the emergence of Portals, users can choose for many starting points on the Web today. IE5.0 does not limit or tie users to a specific portal; instead, users can easily change their home page to the site they choose. With the Home Page Object Model, this process can be as quick as a single click, and this is technology that all Portals can take advantage of. In today’s business environment, the ability to integrate the browser with other productivity applications is critical. IE5.0 provides this integration with technologies such as Smart Edit, which allows users to seamlessly edit Web documents in their native application with a simple click of the Edit button. IE5.0 provides users with the flexibility in the applications they use, whether it be their email client, news-reader or editor.

Money saver

IE5.0 and Internet Explorer Administration Kit 5.0 provide easy-to-use and powerful options designed to save administrators time in deploying and managing Web solutions. Key areas of focus for saving administrators with IE5.0 are as follows:

• Cost-effective customisation, deployment and management
• Best internal solution
• Richest solution across platforms

IE5.0 provides a minimal browser download that is much smaller than version 4.0. In addition IE5.0 is much smarter about what it does and does not need to be installed. If a user needs a feature he or she has not installed, it is dynamically installed based on the administrator settings. A streamlined Internet Explorer Administration Kit customisation wizard provides administrators easier access to the customisation options they want and more power over browser settings. Administrators can now seamlessly customise and deploy Internet Explorer 5.0 along with Microsoft Office 2000 to save time delivering powerful Web solutions to their users. In addition, administrators can easily deploy powerful solutions across platforms and languages through the premier cross-platform and international language support included in IE5.0

Deploying and managing Web-based applications

Another of IE5.0’s compelling features is the browser’s power as a development platform. With companies moving more and more of their day-to-day business on to the Internet, the ability to create Web-based line-of-business applications that integrate tightly with a company’s existing information structure is essential. Internet Explorer 4.0 provided developers support for Dynamic HTML, a rich set of technologies composed of HTML, the Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) Specification, scripting and support for the Document Object Model (DOM) that enables rich data-based applications. IE5.0 will save developers time writing rich Web-based applications. The key areas of focus for saving developers time are as follows:

• Enhance leading support for open Internet standards
• Enable enterprise-ready Web applications via programming model improvements
• Bring true componentisation to Web authoring

IE5.0 furthers Microsoft’s support for Internet standards via enhanced support for HTML, CSS, DOM, XML, Extensible Stylesheet Language (XSL), ECMA-script and HTTP. IE5.0 also brings the benefits of true componentisation to Web authoring through innovations such as Dynamic HTML Behaviours. Simultaneously, improvements to the browser-programming model enable further richness on the Web platform, such as drag-and-drop capabilities across frames and applications.

Navigation and user interface enhancements

The above design goals cross all user segments from the end user just browsing content on the Web to the power user requiring remote and offline usage, from the IT administrator deploying and maintaining the browser to the Web developer creating rich Web content. IE5.0 offers benefits in all usage scenarios with navigational and user interface enhancements, improvements in installation, configuration and publishing and making it easier to develop rich Web content.

• AutoComplete. When users type a URL in the address bar or a form within a Web page (e.g. a search, name, address etc.), this feature remembers and automatically completes the typing of previous entries, so users type information only once, not each time they visit a site.
• AutoCorrect. IE 5.0 automatically correct misspelled Web addresses so users are not delayed unnecessarily.
• Autosearch. Users can now type a simple phrase in the address bar, such as "Microsoft Internet Explorer," rather than a specific URL, and Internet Explorer will automatically direct them to an appropriate site http://www.microsoft.com/windows/IE/, as well as offer additional search options.
• Automatic Install. If users encounter a Web page that requires the installation of a new component for it to be viewed (e.g. a language pack, Java Virtual Machine), Automatic Install does the work for them.
• History. Users can locate recently viewed sites more easily via multiple views of History (e.g., by order visited), smart sorting of sites within each view by first letter in domain name (e.g. www.Microsoft.com) rather than first letter in URL (e.g. www.microsoft.com), and searching History by words or by URLs from within the History Explorer Bar.

• Windows Radio Toolbar. Users can now play radio broadcasts from all over the world from directly within the browser.
• Web accessories. Now users can add integrated services such as custom explorer bars, toolbar buttons and menu items that link directly to the content and applications they want.
• Easy integration with applications. Users want flexibility in the applications they use, so Internet Explorer enables them to easily set the email, newsgroup readers, HTML editors, etc., of their choice to work with the browser. They can even set Web-based mail services such as the MSN Hotmail Web-based email service as their default email editor so they can easily send Web sites they visit with Internet Explorer using their Hotmail account.