[thelist] IE 6

[James Aylard]

N at ta$,

> A while back there was a thread regarding Internet Explorer 6 and
> someone had provided a link to download it...I perused the Archives to
> no avail and am wondering if anyone has any information on this...

	You can find a copy of the IE 6 beta in the Evolt browser archive
(http://browsers.evolt.org/). However, be forewarned that this is a
bootlegged copy that escaped into the wild a month or so ago, and is *not*
an official Microsoft release. It is not a terribly impressive beta, and I
personally recommend against installing it.

> I actually downloaded from their link; however, when I attempt to
> install it, I am asked for a username and password?? Is this download
> only for Microsoft Beta Testers? If so, when will the public release be
> available and where can read up on proposed features?

	Hmm. I don't know about the copy you downloaded; I hadn't heard there was
even a link publicly available. The public preview release was rumored ready
for release sometime this week, concurrent with the release of beta 2 of
Windows XP (http://www.wininformant.com/Articles/Index.cfm?ArticleID=20240).
However, the latest word is that XP beta 2 slipped into next week
(http://www.wininformant.com/Articles/Index.cfm?ArticleID=20248), and
presumably IE 6 with it.
	Before I was fully aware that it was the bootlegged beta, I did install the
pre-public IE 6 beta and ran some tests. IE 6's CSS 1 support is virtually
flawless -- just a couple of extremely minor variances from the W3C
recommendation that may well be fixed before the final release. HTML 4
support -- reasonably strong in IE 5.5 -- was little changed, support for
the <optgroup> element being the only new addition that I saw.

James Aylard