News from TechEd: Internet Explorer 5 demo

Microsoft's Technology Education (TechEd) conference is typically used toshow-off future trends for the Windows software industry. One of the bigevents at this years show was the first public demonstration of InternetExplorer 5.0, shown in "pre-beta" form to attendees. Microsoft says that awide-scale beta test is still a few weeks away, while Beta 1 of IE 5.0 willbe included in Windows NT 5.0 when it ships later this month.

Currently, IE 5.0 looks almost identical to Internet Explorer 4.0, which isshipping with Windows 98. Microsoft has made the program more modular, however, so that users can download small components as they wish, makingfor shorter downloads and a smaller product. The biggest changes to IE 5.0are under the hood, with enhancements to the Dynamic HTML engine, a newFavorites menu, and toolbar customizing options. Microsoft is also workingon a new technology it calls "behaviors", which are components built onscriptlets (a script-based object technology introduced in IE 4.0) that canbe added to Web pages. Behaviors separate content and programming functionsso that developers can focus on their specialties, rather than be forcedto be jack-of-all-trades