June 13, 2003

"What browser?" IE 5.5 SP1 on Win95. "What version?"

Yes, I know Internet Explorer is a mess, but I certainly didn't know this...

I've heard that the same version of IE renders css differently on different versions of Windows. That's true, but there's even more: There are different versions of the same version of IE on Windows 95!

I've tried this blog on two computers, the first one running Windows 95 with IE 5.5 (SP1) and the other one running Windows 95 with IE 5.5 (SP1) as well. Those two computers doesn't render the blog the same way. At all.

After looking in the About window for a more detailed version number it turns out that one is running IE 5.50.4807.2300 and the other one IE 5.50.4522.1800. I then went to Windows Update to see if there was any updates (e.g. hotfixes, etc.) for the older version, but according to the site IE was completely up to date.

So appearantly IE 5.5 SP1 on Windows 95 is not necessarily the same as IE 5.5 SP1 on Windows 95!

Posted by djst at June 13, 2003 7:42 PM
Comments

Yes. And it's not just windows 95. I remember trying to get our corporate time reporting program running on W2000. I think I came across at least 2 different IE versions there as well.

And yes, they all sucked.

Posted by: bobo at June 13, 2003 9:21 PM

Windows Update won't give you any hotfixes for IE 5.5 SP1, because IE5.5 SP1 is no longer supported. The only update that's offered is IE5.5 SP2 or IE 6.

the difference-in-display issues aren't too serious in my experience - anything that works even vaguely well works the same on IE5.01 up to 5.5 SP2. It's really not worth trying to work around the minor variations in bugs - just avoid giving anything IE 5.x anything it can't handle properly. Given that it's a personal site, you could just hide all of your CSS from anything less than IE6 and leave those users with an unstyled page.

Posted by: at June 13, 2003 10:42 PM

The answer is simple. One has security hotfixes, the other one does not.

Win95 is no longer a supported product, thus you'll get zip from windows update.

Posted by: rizzo at June 14, 2003 1:59 AM

Why is the onestat appearing when I view using Firebird?

Posted by: alanjstr at June 17, 2003 1:45 AM

It doesn't necessarily look right in Moz either. By the time you build a user stylesheet to get rid of the mousetype on most blogs, some things wind up in inappropriate places. In this case, "the bird blog" is overlaid by the calendar days.

Posted by: at June 17, 2003 7:05 AM

Simple...

IE 5.50.4522.1800 = IE 5.5 SP1

IE 5.50.4807.2300 = IE 5.5 SP2

Posted by: Phil at July 10, 2003 5:52 PM

Phil, then why does the About box of IE 5.50.4807.2300 say SP1?

Posted by: David Tenser at July 11, 2003 3:08 PM

How to Determine Which Version of Internet Explorer Is Installed: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;164539

Posted by: Tar at July 13, 2003 2:34 AM