MS admits 'incompatibilities' with IE 5
Neil Laver, Microsoft's Internet Product Manager, admitted that there were "some incompatibilities", but argued that IE 5 bugs were not to blame for the problem. Laver explained: "Visual 6 was designed for IE 4. With IE 5, there are some incompatibilities. But the problem exists within Visual 6, not IE 5. However, we do need to update it."
The bugs appeared when software developers used Visual InterDev, Visual Basic, and Visual J++, along with the IE 5 Web browser to create graphical user interfaces for their applications. The bugs included browser crashes following the use of the Visual J++ and Visual InterDev debuggers, Microsoft admitted.
IE 5, launched Thursday, includes Extensible Markup Langauge (XML) support for data exchange and improved Dynamic HTML (DHMTL) support for Web graphics.
Laver said a service pack will be released "this spring" but no exact date was given. Meanwhile, the company is alerting software developers about the bugs on the Visual Studio Web site.
"We advise customers to live with the incompatibility for now until the service pack is released," said Laver.