IE6. What the hell is the point?

[Mercutio]

I noticed IE6 is on the latest driver CD for the Modems I normally buy, so I installed it on one of my machines.

It looks the same as IE5. It acts the same as IE5. All the menus are the same. Speed is the same. It's IE5 with a slightly different icon, near as I can tell.

So for you every-day IE users (most of you, probably), what's the difference? What am I missing?

 

[P5-133XL]

The main difference that I have noticed is that IE6 has more control over cookies. See internet options->privacy tab. That was not there till IE6.

 

[Will Rickards]

It is supposed to be faster. I think it is.

It screwed up my mcafee download scan.
'webscanx has performed an illegal operation'

I like the new icon... it's spiffy.

But IE is still IE. No major interface enhancements.... that I can think of.
The only major interface enhancement to my browsing experience has
been the google toobar.

 

[NRG = mc²]

Well.. its got that annoying little popup toolbar and image "shrink to fit" feature which are both damn annoying, and it also offers you yet another chance to have your computer screwed by some script or something (all I know is that I have a patch for it. Not sure what exactly it does)

 

[timwhit]

The only major interface enhancement to my browsing experience has
been the google toobar.

Me too...after Clocker reccommended it I went and downloaded it...I haven't been dissappointed at all. Makes searching for things much faster.

What else could MS do to IE? It seems perfect IMHO, it is plenty fast, never crashes, displays every page correctly...

I'm sure someone will disagree with me, but no other browser can compete.

-Tim

 

[Mercutio]

I notice now that it also buts a little "save" button over images when I mouse over them. IE6 has to do something else besides that and the cookie options. This is a 55MB upgrade?

timwhit, try Mozilla on a slow connection sometime. Or try it at all. Also very fast. Also never crashes. Is more standards-conforming than IE (which doesn't matter much anymore, since IE is now the de facto standard).

 

[P5-133XL]

One other improvement that I have noticed that I did not think of before: IE6 prints web sites better.

 

[Tannin]

Tim asked, "What else could MS do to IE? It seems perfect."

No software that does not have an OS/2 version is perfect. Fact of life.

 

[Corvair]

I've always thought of IE 6 as a massive collection of tweaks applied to IE 5.

 

[Corvair]

By the way, Service Pack 1 for IE 6 should be available sometime in the next several weeks (early March?).

 

[yesnomaybe]

Although I admit I use IE5 most of the time, I have a soft spot for the latest version of Opera, which has many interface improvements over IE. (I am using Opera atm, because IE5 crashes on this forum; maybe someday I will switch to Opera permenantly).