August, 2006

I had mentioned a while back that we planned to call the version of IE7 in Windows Vista “Internet Explorer 7+”. Well, the feedback we got on the blog was overwhelming – many of you didn’t like it. So, as we’ve said on our website , we heard you. I’m pleased to announce that we’re switching the name back to “Internet Explorer 7”. No plus. No dot x. Just “Internet Explorer 7”. Specifically, here are the official full names: For Windows XP: “Windows Internet Explorer 7 for Windows XP” ...

We are currently locking down IE7 for shipping and I wanted to give an update on the CSS work that went into IE7. Chris originally outlined our plans for IE7, and we listened to a lot of feedback ( blog , connect database , conferences , our WASP partnership etc.) to help us address the most grievous bugs and prioritize which features to put in for IE7. I like to thank especially the contributors on this blog for their participation. Your feedback made a difference in deciding what issues to address...

Hello again, this is Peter Gurevich, Performance PM (among other things) for IE7. We have heard a lot of requests to improve our Jscript engine, especially now that AJAX sites are becoming more prevalent on the web. I want you all to know that we have been listening and have recently made some great fixes to our engine to improve the garbage collection routine and to reduce unbounded memory growth. You should see noticeable improvements on AJAX sites in the Release Candidate we shipped last week...

This morning we released our first public release candidate, IE7 RC1, for Windows XP. You can download it at http://www.microsoft.com/ie . The RC1 build includes improvements in performance, stability, security, and application compatibility. You may not notice many visible changes from the Beta 3 release ; all we did was listen to your feedback, fix bugs that you reported, and make final adjustments to our CSS support. I do want to call attention to two changes in particular. First, IE7 RC1...

I’ve been getting questions from folks lately who are wondering what will happen to IE6 (SP1) when IE7 ships. “Will Microsoft continue to provide security updates for IE6 after IE7 ships?” “Will customers have to migrate to IE7 by some point in time?” The answer is simple: IE6SP1’s support policy will not change when IE7 ships. Everywhere that IE6SP1 is supported today, IE6SP1 will continue to be supported until the OS it ships with expires. Are you running IE6SP1 on Windows 2000 SP4? You will...

Hi, Travis here, a program manager for Trident/OM. In Beta3, you may have noticed that modal or modeless dialogs created from script seem to be slightly bigger than their IE6 counterparts. This is due to a recent change to bring the behavior of these dialogs closer to their window.open cousins. In essence, we want to free developers from worrying about how much content size they are going to get when they request a modal or modeless dialog (from IE7 and onward). Note: our definition of content size...

My name is Seth McLaughlin and I have been working as a Program Manager intern on the User Experience team for the past few months. The summer is coming to an end and I will soon be returning to school at the Rochester Institute of Technology. Before I go, I wanted to let you know about a new resource that’s available for all of you keyboard lovers out there. There are many great shortcuts in IE7 - two of my favorites are CTRL+E to quickly access the Search box and ALT+D to select the Address...

Hello again, this is Peter Gurevich, IE PM for ClearType (among other things, as my blog posts have shown). Today I want to give you a little heads up on an issue we have seen with DXTransforms and ClearType, and let you know what we have done to ensure good readability of text in IE. During our testing we noticed that DXTransforms are sometimes applied to elements that contain text (now rendered in ClearType). As our users also noticed, the ClearType text then looks extremely blurry - unfortunately...

Last time I posted about search I talked about our new extensibility mechanisms: window.external.AddSearchProvider, and Search Discovery . Today I’d like to talk about enhancements we made since that post, and point you to a tool that you can use to create your own custom providers. To recap the last post: In Beta 2, window.external.AddSearchProvider gave website authors the ability to put a link on their page to prompt users to add a new search provider. We locked this call down using logic similar...

My name is Mark Harris, and I am the Program Manager driving extensibility in IE7. With the creation of www.ieaddons.com we have a rich set of 3 rd party add-ons, and we are committed to improving this resource over time. Most users are familiar with toolbars, but many don’t realize the breadth of the add-ons available for Internet Explorer. Personalize Your Ride I rented a Harley-Davidson Sportster 1200C this past weekend (hold the mid-life crisis jokes). There are a huge number of accessories...

Hi there, it’s Max again, and with the availability of our first release candidate (RC1) build of IE7, I wanted to explain a new feature some of you might have seen when installing and running RC1. As an overall goal for IE we want to build the most stable and reliable browser that we can. We know that we sometimes make mistakes that cause crashes or hangs, but we actively try to find and fix the cause for as many as possible. Tools such as Windows Error Reporting help us a lot here, and we encourage...

Hi everyone, I’d like to point out a few changes we made to the installation process for the Release Candidate that we think you’ll like. Installation of the Release Candidate will automatically remove any previous version of IE7. If installation detects a previous version of IE7, it begins uninstall for you so you don’t have to dig through ‘Add/Remove Programs’. After uninstall completes and the machine restarts, installation begins automatically and reboots the machine immediately when...

The IE cumulative August 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, 2 information disclosure vulnerabilities and 1 elevation of privilege vulnerability. For more information on the contents of this update, please see: Microsoft...

A presentation at Black Hat last week has sparked some discussion in the community. The presentation talks about the potential dangers of script in feeds. I posted on the RSS Team blog regarding the mitigations that are implemented in the IE7 Feed View and the Windows RSS Platform that specifically address potentially malicious scripts in feeds. We welcome discussions about security and RSS which will ultimately benefit users. Keep the feedback coming! Walter VonKoch Program Manager

It’s clear from the comments that the participants and readers enjoyed our August 10 th chat. It was a pleasant surprise to not only get a ‘Great Job’ but also to get ‘xxxx’ (kisses) from one of the participants (to find out the exact quote, check out the transcript and Ctrl+F ‘xxxx’). I never expected to connect in this way with a customer but hey, I love surprises. Please feel free to come to the next chat (the schedule is available at: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/expertzone/chats/default...

Are you developing on the Windows RSS Platform? If so, you may want to check out the post on some improvements on the RSS team blog. Most notably the RSS Platform is now API complete. This means that, barring any serious bug that we must fix, applications written against the Beta 3 API will run unmodified against the final RTM release of the platform. Check them out. Walter VonKoch Program Manager

Hey all you ActiveX control owners out there, this is Sharon, PM owner of Manage Add-ons. Today I’m asking you to help us clean up the Manage Add-ons interface by digitally signing your controls. Manage Add-ons (Tools à Manage Add-ons à Enable or Disable Add-ons) displays information about all of the controls on a user's system. It shows them the control name, publisher name and control status (enabled or disabled) among other things. Controls that are not properly signed become an eye-sore in...

You may have read reports of a new, irresponsibly disclosed vulnerability that affects IE 6.0 SP1. We are aware of this issue and are actively working on an update that addresses the problem, which was introduced with our last security update (MS06-042). This issue only impacts customers running IE 6.0 SP1; customers running Windows XP SP2, Server 2003 SP1, IE 5.01 on Windows 2000, or any of the IE7 betas including Windows Vista are not affected. As far as we know, there are no active exploits at...

The Windows Live team released a new tool for editing and creating blogs yesterday called Windows Live Writer (WLW). I am using it right now to post this entry, and I am impressed. It supports WYSIWYG editing , saving drafts of my posts, inline photos, and -- can you believe it? -- support for multiple blogging engines: Live Spaces (of course), Blogger , and many others. Any blog site that supports the Really Simple Discoverability (RSD), Metaweblog API, or Movable Type API is supported out of the...

This morning we re-released our August security update (MS06-042) for IE 6.0 SP1. This update is available through all of our normal release channels including Windows Update , Automatic Update, Download Center and our deployment tools such as WSUS. As I mentioned Tuesday , the original release of MS06-042 introduced a new security vulnerability for IE 6.0 SP1 users. This re-release fixes that vulnerability. We recommend all IE 6.0 SP1 customers install the update immediately. Users running Windows...

I wanted to point out that many of the IE team members have their own blogs and frequently post there about IE topics. Some recent examples: Chris Wilson talks about CSS compliance, Jeff Davis writes about IE’s command line parsing as well as how ActiveX controls and popup blockers interact, and Justin Rogers blogs about implied tags in HTML. The RSS part of our team, of course, has their own team blog . More of our team members’ blogs are listed in the bottom of the right column of this page. ...

Here’s a quick reminder to tell you that members of the IE team will be online for an Expert Zone chat this coming Thursday, August 10th at 10:00AM PDT (5:00PM GMT). A transcript will be published after the chat. You can also browse through the transcripts of other recently held chats. These chats are lots of fun and we hope you will join us for the chat if you can. See you all on Thursday! Cheers, Uche Enuha Program Manager