September 10, 1996
Microsoft's debut of Internet Explorer 3.0 Web browser has been marred by numerous bugs in the software.
Researchers at Princeton University, Princeton, N.J., uncovered a security hole that lets hackers set up false Web pages, draw unsuspecting users in and then run DOS commands on their systems. Microsoft released a fix for the hole several days after it was publicized. It is located at www.microsoft.com/ie.
Many users have complained of frustrating glitches that slow Web browsing and cause them to get stuck in certain Web pages. The bugs could cause system crashes or data loss. Microsoft said some of the bugs have been fixed, but claims it has not been able to duplicate some bugs and it blamed one bug on Novell. The known bugs are:
- Occasional inability to link from site to site when using Novell's Client 32 software;
- Cursor and mouse freeze-ups;
- Users must re-register their names on every page of a site that requires registration, instead of just once per site;
- Occasional inability to display Web page items that change upon every visit to the page;
- Flickering screens on some Web pages;
- Sites that appear as blank pages.
According to Kevin Unangst, a product manager for IE 3.0, the bug causing the inability to link to certain Web sites that affects users of Novell's Client 32 requester is caused by the client, not the browser. The browser makes a socket call and the requester either interferes with or replaces that call.
"As far as we can tell, their client software is returning a good IP address, followed by garbage," Unangst said.
Tom Oldroyd, product marketing manager for Client 32 at Novell, disagreed with Unangst, and said the problem code is found in a layer beneath both the browser and the requester, in a Winsock dynamic link library used by the requester. "Hopefully, Microsoft will fix Winsock" to handle the simultaneous name resolution required, he said.
Oldroyd said Novell expects to post a work-around to this bug this week and that a fix will be included in the Client 32 that ships with the next release of NetWare, version 4.11, code-named "Green River," due to ship this fall.
Microsoft's work-arounds for the Client 32 bug and the flickering screen bug were posted late last month at ww.microsoft.com/IESupport/content/Issues.
A fix for the re-registration bug was posted late last month at www.microsoft.com/ie.
Unangst said Microsoft has been unable to duplicate the freezing cursor and mouse bug and has not yet identified whether the Web-page display bugs are a IE 3.0 problem or a problem with certain Web sites.
At least one user plagued by the cursor and mouse freeze-up bug, Russell Nemhauser, systems developer at Commonwealth Associates, Irvine, Calif., said it was "driving me insane," and keeping him from productively working on the Web.