14 DAY TRIAL // Yesterday, Microsoft announced a new feature being added to its Internet Explorer (IE) browser, namely auto updates, set to kick off in January in Australia and Brazil, and the company was keen on explaining that the move should not affect businesses. As part of this move, the company is re-issuing the IE9 or IE8 Windows Update, while also removing some of the prompts that have been previously included with these apps, in an attempt to ensure a great experience with minimum user interaction.
However, the update will be delivered as a high-priority update for Windows XP, while being classified as Important for Vista and Windows 7.
“Once issued, this update will install Internet Explorer 8 for users on XP SP3 that are still using IE7 and IE6; users on Vista SP2 and Windows 7 RTM and SP1 will be moved to Internet Explorer 9,” Microsoft’s Stephen L Rose explains.
Since it does not want to disrupt activities within enterprises, Microsoft announced that it would continue supporting specific versions of Internet Explorer until the platforms they had been launched on reached their end of life.
“This means that if you’ve taken a dependency on a particular version of Internet Explorer, the support for that version doesn’t end simply because of the introduction of the auto-upgrade mechanism,” Stephen L Rose continues.
Enterprises who do not want a newer version of Internet Explorer across computers in the company can make use of the aforementioned IE Blocker Tool to prevent upgrades.
“The IE9 Blocker Toolkit helps ensure that IE9 is introduced to PCs at the right time. This way you can still test any updates before they are pushed out to your users. For non-managed environments, this will improve safety and security of the browser experience as well as performance and standards compliance,” he explains.
Moreover, there is also the option to go back to a previous flavor of Internet Explorer, provided that users have accidentally upgraded to a newer release.
You can download Internet Explorer 9 from Softpedia via this link.
Internet Explorer 8 (Softpedia Edition) is available here.
The aforementioned Blocker Toolkit for Internet Explorer can be found here.