Mac Internet Explorer 5.0 Nears Completion

Internet Explorer 5.0 is now in Beta 24 of its development and coming close to a final product. There have been some minor enhancements since our original report, but other than those and stability and rendering improvements, not much has changed. Instead, the team has been hard at work to make sure that this version of Internet Explorer is as solid as any other browser out there, and to assure that pages render in sync with the latest version of Netscape's browser.

While we've already discussed the main feature set of the new release, there are a few details that have been added since our previous report, and some that we missed. Besides featuring a faster and much-improved rendering engine, the new version of Explorer adds a number of smaller, handy features that will make the user much more productive.

One example is Window Cycling. By using "Command-Shift-~" the user can quickly cycle through all open browser windows straight from the keyboard, without using the mouse. In addition, Microsoft has made almost every Web page element tab-selectable so that users can navigate through webpages directly from the keyboard.

Version 5.0 offers preference settings to allow users to highlight each individual link, whether image or text link, by hitting the Tab key. Hitting Tab after loading a fresh page will select the first link on the page; successive Tabs will continue to cycle through the rest of the links on the page. Once a link is selected, hitting the Return or Enter key will activate it.

But keyboard navigation in Internet Explorer 5.0 doesn't stop at hypertext links; it also does forms. Everyone who's had to fill out a Web form knows how frustrating it can be when the Tab key stops at the pop-up menus in online forms, forcing you to reach for your mouse. Well, believe it or not, the new version of Explorer not only allows the user to select a pop-up form menu, but also to cycle through and select from its options.

Hitting Option-Tab will automatically switch up to and highlight the text in the URL input field, and will proceed to cycle through only the text-input fields on a given page. Microsoft also allows the user the preference of setting Option-Tab to cycle through links, and Tab for text fields. In addition, the development team has implemented some extremely handy under-the-hood features, such as one that strips the carriage returns from a URL when it is pasted from the clipboard to the browser.

According to sources, Internet Explorer 5.0 also features tons of work done to the way the rendering engine displays tables and more support for Cascading Style Sheets 2.0, as it moves into the late beta stages. The release is expected sometime in January and will most definitely be demonstrated at the upcoming Macworld Expo, sources said.