June, 2006

Hello, this is Kelly Ford, a test lead on the IE team and a big keyboard user of Internet Explorer. In an earlier post, Aaron Sauve provided The Keyboard Lover’s Guide to IE . The IE community has given us quality feedback on our keyboard model during the beta cycle, and in beta 3, we have tried to bring more predictability and consistency with earlier IE versions in response to this feedback. In beta 3, we have made some changes in hotkey assignments, added some new hotkeys, and changed keyboard...

We’ve noticed questions/comments/confusion about uninstalling IE7 so I wanted to highlight one of our FAQs and add a little more detail. Uninstalling IE7 will leave you with a fully-functional IE6 and allow you to install the latest release, IE7 Beta 3 , which we recommend for all IE7 beta users so they benefit from the latest bug fixes and security updates. To uninstall Internet Explorer 7 Beta 2, Beta 2 Preview, or Beta 1: Click "Start", and then click "Control Panel" Click "Add...

This morning we released IE7 Beta 3 for Windows XP. This version includes improvements in reliability, compatibility, security, and a few end user features. Give it a try at http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/default.mspx . Based on your feedback, we’ve made some changes to IE7. Beta 3 returns the email button to the toolbar customize dialog (one of the most requested features), and enables reordering of tabs by dragging them to the left or right. In this version you can also scroll horizontally...

Hi everybody, Max here. I posted before about " A New Look for IE ” back when we released the beta 2 preview, and with the launch of beta 3, I wanted to take a moment to tell you about some of the new functionality we have added and changes we have made specifically related to your feedback. First and foremost, let me thank everybody who has put the time and effort towards giving us feedback, whether it’s through our connect site , participating in our monthly online chats , talking with us at...

Hi, I’m B. Ashok, the Product Unit Manager for Web Development Tools – we have our own team blog ( http://blogs.msdn.com/webdevtools ), but I wanted to post over here to discuss a change my team has made which has an effect on users of IE7+ in Windows Vista. Specifically, we are removing the DHTML Editing Control from the Windows Vista product. The DHTML Editing Control shipped in Windows XP and Windows 2003 Server, in a file called dhtmled.ocx. This file contained two flavors of the control:...

Hi, I’m Aaron Kornblum, Internet Safety Enforcement Attorney at Microsoft, and a member of Microsoft’s global team committed to help fight cybercrime and protect our customers while they are online. As a parent, former Air Force prosecutor and civil litigator, and now in-house corporate counsel focused on Internet Safety, I am increasingly concerned by the proliferation of cybercrime and, in particular, online fraud such as phishing. My IE colleagues have invited me to share with you the news of...

My short interview with Window Snyder from Matasano has been posted over on their blog . Check it out! -Christopher Vaughan

We got a lot of feedback that people were unable to add photos to their MSN Space using IE7 Beta 2. The MSN Spaces update fixes this issue while adding support for a lot of other cools things, like modules for daily tasks and those including Windows Live Gadgets . So test it out, upload your photos and keep sending us your feedback. - Anurag

The transcript from the June 8 th chat is now available online . The chat was a lot of fun as we kept up with the frantic pace of answering the stream of questions in the hour available. Donuts, as usual, kept us going. Keep an eye on the chat schedule at http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/expertzone/chats/default.mspx for upcoming chats. We typically hold the IE chats on the second Thursday of every month. Thanks to everyone who showed up for their feedback and we hope to see you at the next chat...

The June Security Update for IE also contains a non-security change to the handling of ActiveX controls; this is the same functionality that was contained in the April IE Security update . However, unlike the April release, there is no publicly available Compatibility Patch. If your company has issues with the timeline of upgrading applications, please work with your Microsoft Account Team or specific ISV (application provider). Again, due to the nature of this topic, we are not taking comments on...

The IE cumulative June 2006 security update is now available via Windows Update . Alternatively, you can receive this and all other Microsoft updates via the new Microsoft Update and I encourage you to upgrade to Microsoft Update if you haven’t already. This update addresses 8 security issues: 5 remote code execution vulnerabilities, one information disclosure vulnerability, one information disclosure/spoofing vulnerability and one spoofing vulnerability. For more information on the contents of...

Hello, we are Durga and Bala, from the IE IDC team. We would like to describe to you, a new feature in Internet Explorer 7 and 7+, Reset Internet Explorer Settings. We have heard from users on their need to recover Internet Explorer to a workable state if it reaches an unusable state due to spurious add-ons, incompatible browser extensions, spyware or malware. Reset Internet Explorer Settings (RIES) provides a one-button solution to get Internet Explorer settings to its workable state. Internet...

We often talk with our partners about all the ways they can take advantage of the extensibility in IE7. Today, Yahoo! released something new and (I think) pretty cool. “Internet Explorer 7 optimized by Yahoo!” presets the homepage and search to Yahoo properties. Of course, users can easily change the settings just as they can with the standard version that we ship. The Yahoo! version of IE7 is available now on the Yahoo site . Yahoo! used the beta version of the Internet Explorer Administration...

Over on the Ajax Blog, Dion Almaer passed on an important tip from Brent Ashley and Tim Aiello for AJAX developers – to have your cross-browser AJAX work better with IE7, you really should be invoking the native XMLHttpRequest (the cross-browser one) first to see if it’s available before instantiating the ActiveX control, instead of the other way around. In addition to the reasons that Brent and Tim discovered, I’ve seen a bunch of code that creates the XMLHttpRequest object, uses it for a request...

Members of the IE team will be online for an Expert Zone chat this coming Thursday June 8 th at 10.00AM PST. These chats are a great opportunity to have your questions answered and hear from members of the IE product team. A transcript will be published after the chat and transcripts of other recent chats are available. These chats are a lot of fun and we hope you will join us for the chat if you can. Cheers - Uche

Hello, Eric Lawrence here from the IE Networking team. I’ve seen a few bug reports and blog comments regarding an observed change in IE7 Beta 2’s caching behavior, and I wanted to post a quick explanation about the situation and assure you that it will be resolved in the next beta. In IE7 Beta 2, we made a change our handling of the Post-Check and Pre-Check extensions in the HTTP Cache-Control header. If you’re not familiar with these extensions, you can get a quick overview here: http://msdn...