14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft already started serving IE9 RC via Windows Update to Beta users and also plans to automatically upgrade the RC Builds to Internet Explorer 9 RTW (release to web). Fact is that the Redmond company is already telling customers and developers to get ready for the final IE9 release, especially now that IE9 RC is being offered via Automatic Update.
Once IE9 is wrapped up, the software giant will automatically upgrade all qualifying Windows 7 and Windows Vista SP2 users to the RTW development milestone.
However, customers that want to dodge the IE9 upgrades can do so by leveraging a toolkit designed to disable the automatic delivery of the next major iteration of IE.
“To help prevent users from installing IE9 RTW through Automatic Update, we are providing the IE9 AU Blocker Toolkit which, when deployed, prevents IE9 RTW offered as an important update via AU,” revealed Vishwac Sena Kannan and Jatinder Mann, IE Program Managers.
“This Toolkit has no expiration date and can be configured either by running the registry file on the client machines or via Group Policy in domain joined environments. The Toolkit also provides an unblock procedure which can revert the block.
“We believe this approach strikes a good balance by helping customers become more secure and letting organizations control when they are ready to deploy IE9 to their users.”
Users must understand that the IE9 AU Blocker Toolkit only blocks IE9 RTW automatic upgrades and nothing more.
For example, even with the toolkit deployed, testers running IE9 Beta will still get IE9 RC Automatic Updates.
Similarly, early adopters running IE9 RC will be automatically upgraded to IE9 RTW, despite having the toolkit installed.
And in addition, manual downloads and deployments of IE9 will also be permitted, regardless of whether the toolkit was used or not.
Microsoft emphasized that it will upgrade all pre-release Builds of IE9 to the final version in order to protect users, especially by patching vulnerabilities in the pre-RTW bits.
“We know that in a corporate environment, the IT organization often wants to delay the introduction of a new browser until they have fully tested its compatibility with internal applications and sites,” Mann and Kannan added.
“We’ve done a lot of work in IE9 to maintain compatibility with sites designed for Internet Explorer 8 and Internet Explorer 7 and intranet sites continue to run in Compatibility View (IE7 mode) by default. Regardless, we know many IT organizations will want to test IE9 before it is widely deployed.”
The Toolkit to Disable Automatic Delivery of Internet Explorer 9 is available for download here. IE9 RC Supports HTML5 Geolocation, Advances Interoperability
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Internet Explorer 9 (IE9) Release Candidate (RC) Build 9.0.8080.16413 is available for download here.