Forget IE8 and Firefox 3.0 Beta 3 - the New Internet Explorer 7 Is Here!

Forget about Internet Explorer 8 and Firefox 3.0 Beta 3 for a moment, because the brand-new Internet Explorer 7 is here. Essentially, the infrastructure of Internet Explorer 7, as well as its predecessor, because IE6 is also affected, will remain virtually unchanged with the exception of a small aspect. In April 2006, the Redmond company introduced a modification in the way the browser handled embedded controls on webpages. In November 2007, Pete LePage, IE Senior Product Manager, informed that the company had licensed technologies from Eolas that will permit it to effectively scrap the "click to activate" behavior in Internet Explorer.

In December 2007, IE7 and IE6 users had the possibility of accessing the first Internet Explorer Automatic Component Activation Preview, and update which has been included as a part of Windows Vista Service Pack 1 and Windows XP Service Pack 3. Well, on February 13, 2008, the IE Automatic Component Activation Preview 2 became available for download.

"The second optional preview for the Internet Explorer Automatic Component Activation is available. This preview is compatible with the February IE Cumulative Update package. As announced earlier, the final behavior will be widely distributed in the April 2008 Internet Explorer Cumulative Update where all customers who install the update will get the change," LePage said.

"We strongly recommend that you deploy this IE ACA Preview #2 update to computers only for testing. The 'Click to activate' behavior will be permanently removed in the Internet Explorer cumulative update that is planned for April 2008. Removing the 'Click to activate' behavior from Internet Explorer will require no changes to existing Web pages. Additionally, the removal of this behavior will not require new actions for developers who want to create new pages. All pages that previously required the 'Click to activate' behavior will no longer require that the user manually enable an ActiveX control. ActiveX controls will continue to function as they did before this change was made to the 'Click to activate' behavior," Microsoft added.

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