Readers-- I'm leaving MSFT for other opportunities. As such, this will be my last post. Thanks for reading! I hope you will all continue to read the IE Team Blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/ie

You're writing some code that uses COM. Do you use SmartPointers or not use SmartPointers? Debate on this topic flares up now and then. The trick to answering it is to seperate the technical facts from stubbornly held beliefs. Like any technology,...

Today I have a mini-FAQ on Favicons. Q: How do I make a favicon appear for my site in IE7? A: There are two ways. The first is to put a file in the root of your domain called favicon.ico. The second is to use a <link> tag with the rel="shortcut...

My posting rate has declined somewhat since we shipped IE7. It seems posts come in bursts. I have a theory for this. At the beginning of a product cycle we are focused on planning, architecting, and implementing. There is not much to talk about, since...

I know, I'm a bit behind the times, but I finally installed it to check it out. If you haven't yet, and you're the sort of person who thinks they may someday make a webpage, you should get it. The features are nice. The spy++-esque features, such as...

Raymond mentioned this particular API once . I mention it, because I had to call it today. A certain third party app has existed for many years, happily calling CreateProcess() and not putting a space in the lpCommandLine string between the executable...

CoUnmarshalInterface() and CoGetInterfaceAndReleaseStream() are not re-entrancy safe. This has certain implications for objects that attempt to unmarshal interfaces into member variables, as a member of my team recently discovered. Suppose you have...

Note: This is part three in a series of posts explaining how ActiveX controls and the IE Pop-up Blocker should interact. The first post is here . If you are a user (and not an ActiveX control developer), and have found this post in an attempt to track...

Note : This is part two in a series of posts explaining how ActiveX controls and the IE Pop-up Blocker should interact. The first post is here . If you are a user (and not an ActiveX control developer), and have found this post in an attempt to track...

As I mentioned previously , one reason users may continue to experience unwanted pop-up windows while browsing is creative use of ActiveX controls that provide methods that allow web sites to open new browser windows. This series of posts will provide...

I was looking at the documentation for TrackPopupMenuEx () today and saw this in the remarks section. This, I suspect, explains a lot of frustration I have experienced in the past. To display a context menu for a notification icon, the current window...

If you write an application that hosts the WebBrowser Control , and you want the control to do something, you can send commands to mshtml via the IOleCommandTarget interface. However, if you are an ActiveX control and you want to send CGID_MSHTML commands...

IOleCommandTarget is very useful. It provides a generic way of sending commands between objects. IE makes extensive use of IOleCommandTarget , both publically and internally. And, like IUnknown , people frequently get it wrong. Each command is composed...

Question: What is wrong with this code? case WM_DRAWITEM: { LPDRAWITEMSTRUCT pdis = (LPDRAWITEMSTRUCT) lParam; COMBOBOXEXITEM cbexItem = {0}; cbexItem.mask = CBEIF_IMAGE | CBEIF_SELECTEDIMAGE; cbexItem.iItem = pdis->itemID; CallWindowProc(pfnOldWndProc...

ActiveX® controls frequently need to communicate with their containing object. For example, a control may want to QueryService for the cached InternetSecurityManager object to decide whether or not to take a particular action . Controls can obtain a pointer...

(I get a lot of e-mails asking this question.) Click Start -> Control Panel -> Add or Remove Programs -> Check the Show update box at the top of the dialog -> Scroll down and click Internet Explorer 7 Beta 2 Preview -> Click Remove ...

At home, I have three computers. The first is my workstation which is used primarily for web browsing with Internet Explorer, reading E-Mail and RAS-ing to work. The second is my Media Center PC which is used for watching TV (I love it when those...

I get a lot of e-mails from Internet Explorer users asking why they still get pop-ups even though they have turned on the Pop-up Blocker. Barring user error, there are three possible reasons discussed below. Note: I will discuss several Pop-up Blocker...

There are some builds floating around the net that claim to be the IE7 Beta 2 Preview release. These are not offical released builds and are not supported. You should be extremely cautious about installing such a build. I would recommend not installing...

Ed Lazowska , in his capacity as cochair of the Presidents Information Technology Advisory Committee says "there is a looming security crisis, and the government, vendors and CIOs aren’t doing enough to stop it," in this interview with cio . (Full...

One problem I have noticed with using the Web to find certain quotes is that there are often several incorrect versions floating around. For example, what did Homer really say ? I have also noticed this problem with the "memorable quotes" section of imdb...

Scoble has posted an interview with Chris Jones. Chris is my lead's boss's boss's boss's boss. Chris is a great guy for whom I have nothing but respect. I first met Chris when I was a dev intern on IE and he took us all to lunch at one of my favorite...

Scoble posted the video of his chat with our CEO. It is a short 10 minute affair.

As chance would have it, the last two years or so I have been eating lunch with the Shell team developers. Today as we sat at the end of the Shell Team Lunch Table, we had unexpected entertainment. Like most corporations, Microsoft employees have to swipe...

Frequently people are confused by the various dropdown quick-complete boxes in IE. Most people lump them all under the term "AutoComplete." There are actually several features in play, and today I will describe them all. Typed Urls Typed Urls appear...