Entered CNET Catalog: 05/17/2003
SKU: CNETMICROSOFTINTERNETEXPLORER6SERVICEPACK
Manufacturer: Microsoft Corp.
CNET editors' review
- Editors' Choice: No
- Reviewed on: 03/31/2003
Fire up IE 6, and you'll hardly notice the difference from IE 5.x ; Microsoft has made few visible changes. Compared to radically overhauled Netscape 6.x, in fact, IE 6's interface looks downright boring.
IE's only significant new interface change is the Media Bar. This Explorer Bar (similar to Netscape's Sidebar feature) is essentially the same one we saw in Public Preview 2 of IE 6. Click the icon in the toolbar, and out pops the Media Bar; click the icon again to make it disappear. When it's open, the Media Bar takes up the left-hand side of the browser and lets you play streaming audio and video without having to pop open a separate browser window. This way, you can surf to other Web pages while continuing to listen to or watch a media stream within the Media Bar. The arrangement works quite well for audio files, but unfortunately, IE scales down video files so that they fit within the Media Bar's narrow frame, making them so small that they're difficult to watch.
We also like another small but incredibly handy interface option: IE 6 finds a smart way to display large graphics files (such as those oversized photos of your nephew on your sister's Web site). In the past, if the graphic was too big to display in your browser window, IE forced you to scroll around to view the whole image. Now, IE simply scales the picture to fit your screen. It also displays a small floating button on the lower-right corner of the graphic; click the button, and the graphic scales up to its normal size. This kind of innovation won't change the world, but it's a nice touch, especially if you're viewing photos on a laptop that doesn't have a high-resolution screen. If you do need the full-sized image, however, you can easily disable the resizer; simply uncheck "Enable automatic image resizing" under Tools > Internet Options > Advanced.
The most significant of IE 6's new features work behind the scenes to keep your personal browsing habits private. Thankfully, they also put IE's Internet privacy features on a par with Netscape 6's powerful privacy tools.
IE 6's main focus is privacy. This dialog box lets you choose whether to block or accept first-party and third-party cookies.
For example, like Netscape 6, IE 6 now lets you choose whether to accept or reject cookies--little text files that Web sites store on your PC so that they can identify you when you visit again--from individual Web sites. Most sites use cookies to personalize your browsing or shopping experience. (For example, Amazon.com uses cookies to show you personalized book suggestions.) And many Web media sites, including CNET.com, use cookies to track which pages you've viewed on the site to get a better idea of what type of content is popular with Web surfers. Other sites, however, use cookies to build profiles of your Web surfing and shopping habits, which they then use to tailor ads and marketing campaigns to your preferences. In other words, it pays to be able to decide exactly which sites you trust and want to accept cookies from.
To set your cookie preferences, click the Tools > Internet Options menu and select the Privacy tab. In the resulting dialog box, you can choose whether to accept or reject all third-party cookies (those set by ad-serving sites that can track you as you browse across multiple Web sites). In a different dialog box, IE lets you get even more specific by entering individual sites and telling IE to either accept or reject cookies from each site.
You can also configure IE to prompt you every time a site tries to set a cookie. Ever since IE version 4.x, the browser simply has let you accept or reject the cookie. IE 6, however, like Netscape 6, lets you tell IE to remember whether you chose to accept this particular cookie and apply the same choice for this particular Web site whenever you visit. That way, you won't be prompted again to make a choice for that Web site. If you change your mind, simply return to the cookie dialog box (called "Per site privacy actions") and change the cookie setting there. We like this depth of control, but it's inconvenient that it takes so many different dialog boxes to get the job done.
Double-click the privacy report (the icon that looks like a small eye) to see if a site has attempted to violate your privacy settings. (Note: IE 6 doesn't really look much different from IE 5.x unless you run it on a Windows XP machine, as you see here.)
While these cookie configuration options basically mirror Netscape 6.x's offerings, IE 6 actually one-ups the competition when it comes to reporting privacy violations. If you configure IE to block certain third-party cookies and the Web site you're browsing tries to set one of those cookies, a privacy icon shows up in the bottom frame of the browser window. Double-click the icon to get a privacy report that tells you which sites tried to set prohibited cookies. It can be eye-opening to set IE 6 to block all third-party cookies and see how many sites try to plant cookies on your system. (CNET.com uses third-party cookies as part of its ad-serving system.)
In version 5.5, IE finally introduced a Print Preview feature. In IE 6, the Print Preview window sports a new drop-down menu that lets you select whether to print an entire Web page, just a selected frame, or all frames individually (one per page). IE 5.5 offered this basic function from the print dialog box but hadn't integrated it into the Print Preview feature; it's a nice touch if you'd like to print, say, an online newspaper article without a lot of pesky ads (provided, of course, that the ads are in a different frame).
Unfortunately, we encountered some odd behavior in IE 6. These quirks aren't serious enough to render the browser a disappointment, but Microsoft should have done more usability testing. In the Tools menu, for example, there's an option called Show Related Links. Select it, and out pops an Explorer Bar (Microsoft's term for the panels that take up the left-hand side of the browser, like the Media Bar) that shows related search engine results from the Alexa search site. Alexa uses surfing patterns from a large pool of Web users to identify sites that may be related to one another. The problem? As you browse to other pages, the Related Links panel never changes and doesn't update with new related links until you click the Update button. On the other hand, Netscape's similar panel continuously updates according to the page you're visiting.
Even more annoying, IE's error messages can be confusing because they do not all behave the same way. Normally, when a Web page experiences a JavaScript or VBScript error, a script error window pops up. For every other similar warning pop-up in IE 6, you must select a check box if you don't want the pop-up to appear again, but in the script error pop-up, you select the check box if you do want it to appear again. We found this to be inconsistent, unintuitive, and annoying.
One last strange and potentially irritating trait: When it was first released, IE 6 didn't play nice with Netscape-style plug-ins, QuickTime in particular. Apple has since updated QuickTime to overcome this problem, and when we played several videos with QuickTime, we didn't experience any difficulties. We're not aware of any other plug-ins that may conflict with IE, but keep your eyes open for similar problems.
We were also a little underwhelmed by IE 6's performance in our speed tests. In one of our tests, IE 6 outperformed IE 5.5 and Netscape 6.1. And IE 6 consistently outperformed Netscape 6.1. However, IE 6 lagged behind its predecessor in almost every other test--not by much, but we'd expect better performance from a major upgrade.
Against Netscape 7, IE 6 turned in a mixed performance. In general, we found that IE 6 performed certain tasks faster than Netscape 7 but fell short in others. HTML page loads were nearly twice as fast on IE as they were using the Netscape browser. On the other hand, Netscape beat IE at loading XML, CSS, and PDF documents.
As with most Microsoft products, Internet Explorer 6's extensive support options won't leave you hanging. First off, you'll find the obligatory Contents and Index files under IE 6's help menu. In addition to that searchable database, you can also connect directly to online support via the help menu (or you can visit the Web site). Here you'll find FAQs, newsgroups, and a link to Microsoft's comprehensive knowledge base.
Live support options depend upon the difficulty of your question and your OS. Windows Me users, for example, can contact e-mail support twice for free, after which they'll pay $35 per incident. Similarly, you get two toll support calls for free, then pay $249 per toll-free call Monday through Friday 5 a.m. to 9 p.m., and Saturday and Sunday 6 a.m. to 3 p.m. PT. Windows 2000 Professional users, on the other hand, get two free e-mail questions (thereafter, it's $99 per incident) and two toll-free support calls for free (then pay $249 per incident); extensive support plans are also available. Tech support in general is way too expensive, these days. Let's hope you can find all your answers in the written materials.
On the bright side, when we called tech support with a simulated problem, we quickly reached a courteous rep, who gave us several workable options.
User opinions
Select a User Opinion to view: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37
User Rating: 
5/10
Out dated Web browser.
Pros: Loads pages decently fast, is decently safe on Windows XP.
Cons: Not so easy to use, barely any features compared to more modern browsers, I don't like the Internet Explorer 6 default theme.
Ease of Use 2
Speed 4
Features 2
Looks 2
Overall disappointing browsing experience compared to more modern browsers. I think it lacks in many critical categories such as Ease of Use and Stability. I really don't like the Default theme. It seems old and out bated. I would use more modern browsers such as FireFox 2 or 3, or Safari 3. We should not even be talking about a browser this obsolete. DO NOT USE IE7 ON WINDOWS XP!
User Rating: 
1/10
Way behind Netscape and Firefox
Pros: Don't have to download it
Cons: No tabbed browsing, poor security
User Rating: 
2/10
A House Without Walls
Pros: Compatible with all sites
Cons: Supports ActiveX Controls, Slow Page Downloads, Takes long to load at startup, Enables sites to steal your credit, Allows adwares/spywares to get through
User Rating: 
4/10
Get Firefox or some other browser.
Pros: Accesses all websites.
Cons: no improvements on security, speed, features or anything.
User Rating: 5/10
a good standard but not the best
Pros: it's included with the operating system
Cons: it always crash pretty unstable unsecure
User Rating: 
6/10
has problems with java
Pros: works better than netscape with better and faster connectivity.
Cons: loses java based web site activities.
User Rating: 
7/10
Don't care about any of you
Pros: The review from the CNET guys says as a con "No startling improvements or new features". I don't think that's a con, but more of a pro! Who cares about tabbed browsing and a million other features, I need to watch webpages, nothing more. And that's what i
Cons: Some leaks...no big deal... they fix it!
User Rating: 2/10
GETTING TO MANY POP UPS
Pros: CANT THINK OF ANY
Cons: NOT FEELING SECURE WITH INTERNET EXPLORER....MAY HAVE TO FIND SOMETHING ELSE...
User Rating: 
3/10
Internet Explorer is not reliable and slow!
Pros: Great interface. Lots of good features.
Cons: Lacks tab surfing. Lacks built-in pop up blocker. Easily taken over by weird search bars. Lots of common web sites such as Yahoo.com or Google.com take forever to load. Surfing speed does not compare with that of Netscape 6.0.
User Rating: 
9/10
Good browser
Pros: Good default browser for Windows XP users. It rarely if ever crashed on my system.
Cons: Is in dire need of a built-in popup blocker. Just be sure to download the Google toolbar to alleviate this problem.
User Rating: 3/10
this browser needs improvement
Pros: none
Cons: no pop up blocking, no tab browsing, no skin colors, spyware, slow in DSL connection, no unistallation.
User Rating: 
8/10
Must get Google toolbar for it to be good
Pros: You can get the Google toolbar (www.toolbar.google.com) for it and then it makes it a very good browser.
Cons: Must get Google Toolbar, because it is low on features, but the Google toolbar makes up for that and I like this browser w/ the toolbar.
User Rating: 2/10
sucks compared to mozilla 1.6
Pros: sidebar, and um........................... .............................. .....................what else? nothing else!
Cons: I got mozilla 1.6 and it has everything that ie has and soooooooo much more stuff. it is not like netscape where they turn ur computer into aol free trial land, it uninstalls correctally. No pop-up blocker, no autofill, slooooooooooooooooooooooooooo oooow
User Rating: 3/10
Now I know there's better
Pros: It comes with Windows. It does open things that others don't, some webpages only look good with IE. I'm not a MS hater, until just recently, I never used anything but IE.
Cons: This browser crashes all the time. It's not because I have a slow comp, mine is very fast. Before I had ever used another browser, IE was always getting DLL errors, and sendin error reports. I still use IE for some things, but it isn't my first choice.
User Rating: 3/10
No More Popups!
Pros:
Cons: I switched to Mozilla and I love it. If a page requires a plugin, Mozilla asks if I want to install that plugin. With MS IE, I was always having Macromedia installed. The problem wasn't the popups, it was the browser!
User Rating: 2/10
Big mistake
Pros: Only pro is it didnt crash after i deleted everything related to search,in regedit!Its starts up now without Bill gates Carding me.
Cons: Stick with IE5.5 or ie5.0 ,even with all the updates IE6.0 sp1 sucks.Its slow,popups will drive you nuts!NUTS ! Time to low level format get rid of all this worthless trash.
User Rating: 4/10
underwhelming
Pros: Didn't have to pay for it.
Cons: Clunky, inexplicably void of expected , past features (zoom in/out, links, etc.and I have installed every new feature available through my XP/Office pro disks, I've exhausted my options, but this baby isn't going anywhere). Basically, I.E. 6.0 is the Dick
User Rating: 2/10
The letest load of M$ Junk
Pros: Security patches (should not have been vulnerable in the first place)
Cons: Crashes with 98SE where ie5.5 worked properly requiring reboot to resume browsing. Slow as hell comparred to ie5.5. More hidden crud files to clutter your hard drive. Connection wizzard with ie6 does not work with 98se. M$ know about connection wizzar
User Rating: 3/10
Very limiting
Pros: Used by about 90% of s*ckers on the web (quantity)
Cons: Lack of helpful features (ad-blocker, instant page zoom, easy user style switching, ...), impairing users to enjoy the web to its fullest extent
User Rating: 1/10
Sorry I upgraded from IE5!
Pros: Ummm, can't seem to list any since my browser has crashed and sent an "error report" to Microsoft about 50 times since yesterday morning.
Cons: See above. Also, noticeably slower than IE5.
User Rating: 4/10
Many Problems with IE6
Pros:
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User Rating: 5/10
Better CSS Support
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User Rating: 9/10
IE Sets the Standard
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User Rating: 3/10
iexplorer is made for BAD developers
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User Rating: 4/10
Can't download some web pages
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User Rating: 4/10
It overally isn't much good
Pros: It may have some multimedia features or some other ones. but not stable
Cons: but it sucks in stability
User Rating: 1/10
Worst browser ever
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User Rating: 3/10
IE blows
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User Rating: 7/10
It's Free, It works
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User Rating: 6/10
It's fine.
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User Rating: 4/10
I thought crashes were for cars!
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User Rating: 8/10
It's the center of gravity
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User Rating: 8/10
Clearly the best
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User Rating: 2/10
Not worth the download time!
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User Rating: 1/10
what were you thinking?
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User Rating: 8/10
The best there is.
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User Rating: 5/10
this browser needs more secuirty wok
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