New Zealand IE8 Taskforce : IT Pro

Internet Explorer 8 - Release Candidate 1 Released

nzie8 — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 00:30:00 GMT

We're excited to make the IE8 Release Candidate available today for public download today in 25 languages for Windows Vista, Windows XP, and Windows Server customers. You can find it at http://www.microsoft.com/ie8. Please download it now and try it out.

Downloads

Windows Internet Explorer 8 Release Candidate 1 for Windows XP.
Windows Internet Explorer 8 Release Candidate 1 for Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 32-bit Edition.
Windows Internet Explorer 8 Release Candidate 1 for Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 64-bit Edition.
Windows Internet Explorer 8 Release Candidate 1 for Windows Server 2003 SP2.
Windows Internet Explorer 8 Release Candidate 1 for Windows Server 2003 SP2 64-bit Edition or Windows XP Professional 64-bit Edition.

(NB: Windows 7 users will get an updated IE8 with the next update of Windows 7)

Internet Explorer 8 is the latest version of the familiar web browser you are most comfortable using, helping you get everything you want from the web faster, easier, more privately and securely than ever before.

Faster Internet Explorer 8 is more responsive with new pages and tabs, opening up fast and reliably. You can now get to the information you care about most, in fewer steps; one click access to your webmail, favourite news sites or other online services.
Easier Reduce the steps to accomplish many common tasks, and automate your access to real time information updates. You can keep track of your favorite sports team, news, weather with a single click.
More Private Helps protect your privacy and confidential information where ever you go on the web.
More Secure Helps protect and stop malicious software from reaching your PC, and makes it easier to detect when a website is an imposter.

IE8 is focused on how people really use the web. Consumers want a browser that makes the tasks they do every day faster and easier. The activities people spend their time on define real-world performance: navigating to websites, working with tabs, searching, keeping track of changing information (like traffic or an auction), and using the information from one site with another (as in getting a map). Everyone wants a trustworthy browser that keeps them in control and protects their safety. Developers want great developer tools, great interoperability, and a powerful platform that enables them innovate. For some people, accessibility is crucial; for some organizations, policy, administration, and deployment are essential.

Support for IE8 RC1 can be received by visiting the Internet Explorer Beta Newsgroup to discuss issues, or by contacting Customer Support Services.
If you use a screen reader, please consult the Internet Explorer 8 Release Candidate 1 release notes before downloading.

Nick

Customising Internet Explorer 8 to Drive Users to Your Website

nzie8 — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 01:45:22 GMT

Hi All,

Nigel Parker from our developer and platform team in New Zealand has put together an excellent blog post on how to leverage some of the new features and functionality in IE8 to drive and enhance the experience users have with websites. Nigel has put together a collection of sample code and examples that the community can build on and leverage, to provide real value and a richer user experience for those using Internet Explorer 8.

In September we were fortunate to have Matt Heller over from the IE Team to deliver a roadshow across New Zealand to raise awareness and address questions and concerns that customers may have with the new version of our browser platform. We recorded our Auckland presentation, so if you weren’t able to attend, or you’d like a refresher, please check out the video online.

We have a wealth of resources available on our NZ IE8 Website, NZIE8 blog and the IE Team Blog so do check them out.

For the full details on Nigel’s examples and demos, see this blog post - http://blogs.msdn.com/nigel/archive/2008/11/13/customising-ie8-to-drive-users-to-your-website.aspx.

Nick.

IE8 Group Policy

nzie8 — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 00:30:55 GMT

Hi All,

For those of you who might be new to Group Policy, here is a quick background. Let’s first assume you use an Active Directory environment to administer the computers in your corporate network. If that is the case, Group Policy provides a wide set of policy settings to manage IE8 after you have deployed it to your users' computers. These settings are locked down and cannot be changed by users, as they are always written to a secure tree in the registry.

The IE Group Policy node in GPEdit.msc (GPEdit.msc is one of the tools used to configure Group Policies):

Group Policy allows you to create IE (and other software) configurations as a part of Group Policy objects (GPOs). The GPOs are linked to hierarchical Active Directory containers such as sites, domains, or organizational units. A client-side extension ensures that your policies are applied and refreshed regularly.

Tools

You might be wondering how to configure Group Policy? All the tools to configure create, manage, view, and troubleshoot GPOs are provided in your Windows operating system. Please check the Windows Server Group Policy site to find a list of the tools that are built into your OS.

The IE8 Deployment Guide, a very important resource itself, is now updated to include content for IE8 Beta 2. For instance, as there are more than a thousand IE GPs, configuring these policies for the first time may seem like a daunting task for a new IT Professional. For this very reason, the Group Policy section of the Deployment Guide has been updated to include recommended Group Policy settings for security, performance and compatibility with IE6 and IE7.

Group Policy support in IE8

In IE8, we have added more than 100 new Group Policies, bringing the total Group Policies supported in IE8 to 1300! Virtually all new IE8 features have Group Policy support, whether it is Compatibility View, Accelerators, or InPrivate Browsing Mode. These policies allow administrators to fully control IE8 features: hide the feature completely, preset the default, lock the user to only use the defaults, etc. For example, an administrator could turn off InPrivate Browsing by enabling the Turn off InPrivate Group Policy.

We understand that organizations have different needs. We provided extra granularity in the form of additional policies, so that features can easily be configured to best suit your needs. For instance, Compatibility View has five Group Policies:

Turn off Compatibility View
Turn off Compatibility View button
Turn on Internet Explorer 7 Standards Mode
Turn on Internet Explorer Standards Mode for Local Intranet
Use Policy List of Internet Explorer 7 sites

As an example, if you are confident all your internal line of business applications and web sites work best with IE8, you can enable Turn on Internet Explorer Standards Mode for Local Intranet Group Policy. This will overwrite the intranet standards mode to be IE8. As usual, each policy comes with descriptive explain text that allows you to fully understand what the policy has been designed to do.

The Explain Text for Turn on Internet Explorer Standards Mode for Local Intranet Group Policy:

IE8 plays an important role in helping protect users against a range of attacks by offering new security features like the SmartScreen Filter, Data URI and Encryption support. All of these security features are GP enabled so the administrator can ensure their users are safe and secure in corporate environments.

Based on the feedback we received from customers, we have Group Policy enabled some of the legacy settings like secondary home pages, something that wasn’t available in IE7. We’ve also given extensive Group Policy support for the Favorites Bar and Command Bar; an administrator now has firm control over how the IE UI will look.

We have refined our Group Policy support in this release and look forward to your feedback once you’ve had a chance to try it out.

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Application Compatibility Logging in IE8

nzie8 — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 00:19:00 GMT

The latest Application Compatibility Toolkit (ACT) release, ACT 5.0.5428.1080 is publicly available and can be downloaded here.

To give you some background, ACT helps customers understand their application compatibility situation by helping identify which applications are compatible with Vista, IE7, and IE8 and which require further testing. ACT allows compatibility data to be uploaded from individual machines to a central location for analysis, grouping and reporting. Once an issue has been identified, help will be available on how to resolve a particular issue or create a workaround. Furthermore, partners and customers using ACT are able to post comments to the Online Application Community, where they can share data and information about application compatibility testing.

The IE components of ACT are:

Internet Explorer Compatibility Test Tool (IECTT). The IECTT helps identify your Web-based issues, shows your results in real time, and allows you to upload and view the data in the Application Compatibility Manager (ACM), a part of the ACT toolkit. As you test your application or site, the IECTT records events in real time when compatibility issues occur. For instance, if one of your sites injects JavaScript to another site and the IE8 Cross-site scripting (XSS) filter detects this as a reflection attack, a Cross-Site Scripting Filter event would be logged in the IECTT UI.
Internet Explorer Compatibility Evaluators (IECE). The IECE can be deployed within an enterprise and will help identify Web-based issues in the background. As you test your application or site, the IECE records events in the background as they occur. You will be able to view the logged events in the ACM after you upload them.

Overall, these tools help customers lower their costs for application compatibility testing, prioritize their applications, and deploy Internet Explorer more quickly.

The work flow for identifying application compatibility issues before rolling out a new version of IE8 is shown below:

Install the latest version of ACT and IE8.
Either deploy the IECE to a body of testers or use the IECTT and enable logging.
Begin a regression test pass of all line of business applications and sites.
Once a compatibility event has been encountered, diagnose the problem and create a suitable workaround or fix.

New Application Compatibility Events added in IE8

We added logging for twelve new Application Compatibility Events in IE8, as shown in the table below. Including the IE7 events, we now currently log 31 compatibility events. The Internet Explorer Compatibility article contains more information on these events.

New IE8 Event Name	Event ID
Cross-Site Scripting Filter	1046
Intranet at Medium Integrity Level	1047
DEP/NX Crash Recovery	1048
Standards Mode	1049
File Name Restriction	1056
Codepage Sniffing	1058
AJAX Navigation	1059
Application Protocol	1061
Windows Reuse Navigation Restriction	1062
MIME Sniffing Restrictions - no IMAGE elevation to HTML	1064
Web Proxy Error Handling Changes	1065
Certificate Filtering	1073

Internet Explorer Application Compatibility article

In the past, we noticed that the ACT tool helped identify the compatibility issues that occur in a line of business application or website, however, the tool itself did not provide any guidance for remediation. In IE8, we are providing a resource that gives exactly that information. The article is linked directly in the IECTT logged message or is directly available here. The article covers the following topics for all IE7 and IE8 compatibility events:

Logged Message – This is a copy of the event description that you’ll see in the Internet Explorer Compatibility Test Tool.
What is it? – This is an elaboration of the logged message explaining what the event is. Additional references are provided when available.
When is this event logged? – This is a short description of what has to happen in your Web page for this event to be logged in the Internet Explorer Compatibility Test Tool.
Example – Most events include examples that demonstrate how to make the corresponding event create a log entry in the Internet Explorer Compatibility Test Tool. These examples help make the description of the event more concrete.
Remediation – Guidance on what you can do to eliminate the incompatibility from your Web site.

We will be adding additional examples and remediation to this article before the final IE8 release.

As you can see, we refined our Application Compatibility logging in IE8 and have provided a useful resource in the IE Application Compatibility article. We look forward to you trying it out and giving us feedback in the IE newsgroups.

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The IE8 IEAK

nzie8 — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 00:15:33 GMT

Hi All,

Back in June, James Pratt and Jane Maliouta alluded to IEAK improvements for IE8. Today, I will be talking about the work we have done in this area.

Internet Explorer Administration Kit 8 Beta

IEAK8 Beta is now available publically for everyone to try. To give you some background, the IEAK allows you to deploy customized packages and manage IE settings post deployment within corporations and among Internet Content Providers (ICP) and Internet Service Providers (ISP). For instance, Acme Corp could use IEAK to create a custom IE package for their employees that has Acme favorites, search providers, home pages, Web Slices, Accelerators, and more.

We simplified creating, deploying and managing branded IE packages. We optimized the IEAK to help you build your customized IE packages more quickly and to allow you to configure and customize new features in Internet Explorer 8, like Accelerators and Web Slices.

In this post, I will be talking about how the IEAK:

Helps customize new features in IE8
Provides full language and platform support
Builds IE8 packages more quickly and is more intuitive.

Customize New Features in IE8

The following new features can be now customized via the IEAK8:

Accelerators

You can easily include custom defaults for Accelerators: simply point to an XML file for the desired Accelerator, or import existing Accelerators from a local machine.

Web Slices

In the Favorites, Favorites Bar and Feeds dialog you can now add custom Web Slices by simply clicking on the Web Slice radio button and specifying the Web Slice information.

Compatibility View

Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 introduces Compatibility View which is a significant enhancement over the “Emulate IE7” functionality from IE8 Beta 1. You can customize this feature in the Compatibility view dialog.

Search Enhancements

IE8 supports search providers which offer rich text and image suggestions; through IEAK 8 you can add search providers with suggestions and configure default search providers.

Additional IE8 Features

Many other IE8 features, like InPrivate Browsing, Developer Tools and Delete Browsing History, can be customized in the Additional Settings page available in the corporate license mode. For example, in a corporate environment you might want to encourage users to delete saved passwords; you can chose to have the Delete Passwords checkbox in Delete Browsing History checked by default. Similarly, you may want to turn off InPrivate Browsing mode by default.

Build Your IE8 Package More Quickly

Internet Explorer 8 Customization Wizard has fewer pages than the Internet Explorer 7 Customization Wizard: you’ll be able to build your customized package faster now.

Furthermore, we have redesigned some screens to simplify the overall flow of the wizard. Custom Components is a good example of this. Compared to the original screen, this dialog box now displays a list of custom components and allows easy addition and removal of items through a pop-up window.

The IEAK7 Custom Components Screen:

The simplified IEAK8 Custom Components Screen:

Full Language and Platform support

The IEAK8 Beta can build IE8 packages for all platforms and 24 languages supported by IE8 Beta 2. Please refer to the blog posted titled IE8 Beta 2 Available in 25 Languages for a complete list of supported platforms and languages.

How does the IEAK apply branding?

Customers have often asked me how the IEAK applies branding to IE. Branding in this case can be defined as any customization of IE, including all the customizations mentioned above. The IEAK generated IE package contains both the IE8 setup files (unless you are using the configuration only package, in which case IE8 would already be installed on your computer and you wouldn’t need the setup files) and customizations. The IE8 setup is used to install IE8. Upon restart, customizations are applied per user to the registry and branding files.

The customizations are stored in the install.ins file found under the Custom or Signup folders in the Internet Explorer directory. The install.ins file contains all types of branding including IEAK and unattend branding. IEAK branding consists of ISP, ICP and corporate branding, while unattend branding consists of the manufacturer defaults.

Branding is also applied when the user chooses to Reset Internet Explorer settings (RIES). This can be done by selecting Reset under the Advanced tab in the internet options dialog. RIES will apply the branding found in the install.ins file. If a user were to remove the install.ins file and reset IE, the branding step would get skipped. In IE8, RIES comes with a Remove Branding option; however, this option only removes ISP, ICP and Corporate branding; unattend branding will not be removed.

We refined the IEAK in this release and look forward to your feedback once you’ve had a chance to try it out.

NB: James discusses what's new in IE8 for IT Pros in his screencast here

Source

Internet Explorer Administration Kit 8 Beta

nzie8 — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 06:40:19 GMT

The Internet Explorer Administration Kit (IEAK) 8 Beta simplifies the creation, deployment and management of customized Internet Explorer 8 packages. IEAK 8 can be used to configure the out-of-box Internet Explorer 8 experience or to manage user settings after Internet Explorer 8 deployment.

Overview

Internet Explorer Administration Kit (IEAK) 8 Beta enables the most efficient way to deploy Internet Explorer 8 and manage Web-based solutions. Learn how to tailor a custom browser to meet your customers' needs. Visit the IEAK 8 Beta site on TechNet for more information on the Internet Explorer Administration Kit (IEAK) 8 Beta.
Please note: You must have Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 installed on your computer in order for IEAK 8 Beta to run successfully.

System Requirements

Supported Operating Systems: Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 2; Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 2 x64 Edition; Windows Server 2008; Windows Vista; Windows Vista Service Pack 1; Windows XP Professional x64 Edition ; Windows XP Service Pack 2; Windows XP Service Pack 3

Refer Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 System Requirements

Visit the IEAK 8 Beta site on TechNet for more information on the Internet Explorer Administration Kit (IEAK) 8 Beta.

You can download the IE Administration Kit here.

Slipstreaming IE8

nzie8 — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 06:36:03 GMT

IE8 can now be slipstreamed into Vista and Window Server 2008 OS images. If you manage the desktop images for your organization, slipstream saves you time by simplifying the task of adding Internet Explorer 8 and any IE updates. If you’re adding Internet Explorer 7 to a Windows XP image you’ll typically install XP and then add IE7 before capturing the image -this can take 2 hours! With IE8 and Windows Vista, you are able to integrate IE8 into the image file of the original operating system in about 15 minutes. No more booting the OS image, manually installing IE and re-capturing the image. The slipstreaming support also extends to IE8 cumulative updates and language packages. Slipstreaming IE8 into an OS image will only be supported on Vista and Windows Server 2008 platforms. Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 do not currently offer a solution for slipstreaming Windows components, which are built using update.exe.

Here are the steps to create a Vista image with IE8 being the out of box browser by default. You can try this yourself with IE8 beta1.

Preparation

1. Install Windows Automated Install Kit

The Windows Automated Install Kit (WAIK) is a tool available for Vista and Windows Server 2008 to manage and customize OS images. This is the tool you’ll be using to slipstream IE8. Download a version of WAIK that matches your local machine configuration (not the image you’ll be slipstreaming IE8 into).

Note: Using a WAIK x64 bit version for a Vista x86 image will not work. For more information, please refer to the WAIK Readme.

2. Create the Vista directory

Copy the Vista directory from the CD onto your local machine.

3. Create 3 temp folders: Mount, Pkg, Sandbox

You can name each folder whatever you want, however remember the purpose of each folder created.

For this example, I created:

c:\slipstreaming\mount
c:\slipstreaming\pkg
c:\slipstreaming\sandbox.

Your final folder structure should look something like this:

4. Download IE8 Beta 1

Download IE8 Beta2 to your local machine from here. For this example, I saved the IE8 Beta2 exe in c:\Slipstreaming\IE8x86en

5. Extract and expand the MSU file

From the IE8 exe file:

To extract the MSU, in the command prompt run this <IE8.exe path> /x: <folder you want the MSU to be placed>. For example: c:\Slipstreaming\IE8x86en\IE8-WindowsVista-x86-enu.exe /x: c:\Slipstreaming\IE8x86en
To expand the MSU, in the command prompt run this expand.exe <path to the IE8.MSU> -F:* <pkg folder>. For example: expand.exe c:\Slipstreaming\IE8x86en\IE8.MSU -F:* c:\Slipstreaming\pkg

Slipstream

1. Mount the Vista install image to your temporary location.

In the command prompt, run this imagex.exe /mountrw install.wim <imagenumber> <mountfolder>

For this example: I am slipstreaming IE8 into Vista Ultimate which has the imagenumber = 4. The command I ran is as such "C:\Program Files\Windows AIK\Tools\x86\imagex.exe" /mountrw C:\Slipstreaming\VistaSP1x86en\sources\install.wim 4 C:\Slipstreaming\mount

If you don’t know the image number of the OS image you are using, you can use the arbitrary large number instead of 4 in the command above like this: imagex.exe /dir c:\VistaRTM\sources\install.wim 20. This triggers help information to be displayed. From the output in your command prompt, choose the SKU that you are using and the IMAGE INDEX is the <imagenumber> that you need.

2. Slipstream IE8 into the Vista image.

If you are using Vista Gold image, you need to change a read only attribute flag prior to executing a slipstream command: attrib -R "<mountfolder>\Windows\Offline Web Pages"

For example: attrib -R "C:\Slipstreaming\mount\Windows\Offline Web Pages"

Now, you are ready to slipstream IE8. Run this in the command prompt: pkgmgr.exe /n:<package folder>\WindowsVista-KB#-NEUTRAL.xml /o:”<mount folder>;<mount folder>\windows” /s:<sandbox> /l:<where you want the log file to be stored>. Ensure the pkgmgr.exe you use is the one installed with the WAIK tools.

For example: "c:\Program Files\Windows AIK\Tools\x86\Servicing\pkgmgr.exe" /n:"c:\Slipstreaming\pkg\Windows6.0-KB944036-x86.xml" /o:""c:\Slipstreaming\mount";"c:\Slipstreaming\mount\windows"" /s:"c:\Slipstreaming\sandbox" /l:"c:\Slipstreaming\slp.log"

Once the slipstreaming command is finished successfully, the slp.log will say “exit code 0x00”.

Remember to add the read only attribute flag back after slipstreaming is complete if using a Vista Gold image: attrib +R "<mountfolder>\Windows\Offline Web Pages"

For example: attrib +R "C:\Slipstreaming\mount\Windows\Offline Web Pages"

3. Save the changes.

Use imagex.exe to save the changes: imagex /commit /unmount <mountfolder>

For this example: "c:\Program Files\Windows AIK\Tools\x86\imagex.exe" /commit /unmount c:\Slipstreaming\mount

You are all done!!! The Vista install image on your local machine is the new Vista build with IE8 slipstreamed.

Since IE8 is part of the Vista image, you can customize it by creating an answer.xml file and running Vista setup with unattend option as such: <VistaPath>\setup.exe /unattend:<answer.xml path>

The Unattended Windows install option enables customization of the OS install, and the answer.xml file provides the “answers” for customizations and drives the unattended install.

You can find more about unattend installs and answer files here:

Unattended Documentation (This documentation is also included in the WAIK)
IE Settings customizable via unattend

After you install the final image, IE8 beta2 will appear under installed updates as such and can be uninstalled in the same way as when installing IE8 standalone.You will be reverted to IE7 if you choose to uninstall IE8.

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