Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.x Program Beta
New Build Announcement
For IE6 Build 2465.3 in English
The Internet Explorer Development team is proud to make a new build of Internet Explorer 6 available to IE 6.x beta program participants in order to obtain your valuable feedback on this beta product! This is a more recent build than the Public Beta. Internet Explorer 6.0 is the browser that delivers the Internet in a fresh new way, with excitement, dynamic multimedia and versatility. Internet Explorer 6.0 is the proven technology to develop rich web based applications quickly and easily and enables a single platform for overall simplicity, while also creating and deploying robust line-of-business applications. Internet Explorer version 6 goes further than ever before in allowing users to get the most out of the web today. Built upon the successful Internet Explorer 5.x product version, 6 includes improved Explorer Bar support so that users can access media and instant messaging while working in the browser. This latest build of IE also has new privacy functionality, documented in the focused testing area of the Techbeta web site. Internet Explorer version 6 continues to focus on performance and robustness so that you can rely upon it for a reliable experience. Also included is built-in support for Internet Explorer Error Reporting so that failures can be reported to Microsoft for the attention of the development team to ensure issues are appropriately addressed. For all users, new features include:
* IEAK users can now try the IEAK 6 beta
* Media Bar gives access to media as an integrated browsing experience.
* My Pictures - Easily view save and mail pictures from the internet
* Privacy Enhancements
For content developers, Internet Explorer 6 continues to enhance the platform with additional DHTML features to allow you to build powerful interactive applications for the browser:
* Support for CSS1 and DOM Level 1 standards.
* Custom Cursors - Use your own cursors within your DHTML content.
* MouseWheel events - Offer users full interactivity with the ability to build mousewheel support into your DHTML application
We're hoping that you will take the time to download this new version of Internet Explorer 6 beta and participate in this important beta program! As you or a representative from your company has already agreed and therefore legally bound you to the follow the guidelines in the Microsoft Legal Agreement for Betas at (formerly known as the Non-Disclosure Agreement), we require your full cooperation with keeping all information that is disclosed to you regarding Internet Explorer 6 confidential including, but not limited to, the product, content of this mailer and the Internet Explorer 6.x Beta Web Site.
RELEASE NOTES
Before you download the most current build of IE6, we want to inform you of some of the intricacies of this particular build. Issues that you may encounter will be documented here each time we deliver a new build to you (we call these "known issues") whereas special features that we are excited for you to spend extra time testing are documented on the focused testing pages on The IE 6.x Website. For developers, we've added some notes of interest to you in the Developer's Notes section below as well. KNOWN ISSUES The Internet Explorer Team does not recommend installing beta versions of IE over beta versions of Operating Systems. Standalone beta versions of Internet Explorer 6 are currently accessible to our beta sites for the purpose of testing on released Operating Systems.
Whistler incompatibility
DO NOT install this version of IE 6 over Whistler or the IE 6 Public Preview! Doing so will cause your machine to fail and may not be reversible.
Cannot download with IE versions 2 to 3.02
If you are using any versions of Internet Explorer between and including IE2 and IE3.02, after you click "Download latest build," you will be presented with a scripting error and will not be able to download the bits.
Cannot download with Netscape
If you are using Netscape 6 and click "Download latest build", you will get a dialog box asking you to submit information. After clicking "OK", nothing is submitted. This prevents you from downloading the bits.
Flash problems
Flash does not work properly in current builds of IE 6. Segments of the Flash animation on web sites may appear to loop and in some cases may cause a crash.
Workaround: In the case of looping, typically refreshing the browser will correct the issue.
Privacy settings work-around
Internet Explorer is currently developing privacy features in version 6.0. If you experience problems in using a particular web site or receive errors related to cookies try adjusting your Internet Explorer Privacy settings to Low to ensure compatibility. Below are steps to accomplish that:
1. In Internet Explorer, click on Tools and select Internet Options. 2. Click the Privacy tab. 3. Adjust the Privacy Preferences slider to Low.
Find a Map
Using the "Find a Map" feature by choosing "View>Explorer Bar>Search" will result in continually being prompted to enable cookies, despite any settings you may have. This will be addressed in a future release.
ISSUES RESOLVED SINCE LAST RELEASE
Personal Bar customization change
When you upgrade IEAK, you will lose your previously installed Explorer bars. The new bar will include the MediaBar, MSNBC, MSN Search and Shopping. You can then reinstall your personal HTML bars after the upgrade.
DEVELOPER'S NOTES
Msxml3 registers itself over msxml
In this tech beta, msxml3 will register itself over any existing version of msxml on your machine, routing all calls into msxml to msxml3. (Msxml3 is the first version of msxml that is completely compliant with W3C standards and the first version of msxml to support XSL/T.) Please verify that data islands and all xml related behavior works as expected.
IFRAME security="restricted"
A new property has been added to the Frame and IFrame elements: Security="restricted".
This new property has the ability to push the Frame/IFrame into the restricted zone so the security setting for this zone will be placed on the contents within the frame. The key scenario here is to prevent malicious script or ActiveX controls from running within a frame on a web-based email application.
Here's an example scenario: John wants to check his mail on Yahoo. He goes to the Yahoo site, logs in and notices that he's got a new message from hacker@hacker.com. Thinking that everything is safe and secure, he clicks on the mail, which displays the contents within an iframe. If we did not have the security property available to us, the iframe will exist within the same security zone as the rest of the application. This will allow the hacker to write malicious script that can access the parent window and browse through the rest of John's mail. The hacker may also have the ability to run destructive ActiveX controls. By forcing the frame into the restricted zone with security="restricted", script cannot execute and ActiveX controls cannot run.
Custom Cursor
The user is now able to generate their own cursor. Even animation is possible! IE supports .cur and .ani files. The look of the existing cursor has been changed to be standard CSS2 compliant.
Focus events
Due to historic compatibility with Netscape, onfocus/onblur are asynchronous and non-bubbling events. Developers have a hard time generating reliable focus