Here is your chance to set Internet Explorer free! You will be able to do so, not only for Internet Explorer 7 in Windows XP SP2, Windows Server 2003 and Windows Vista, but also for the previous version IE6 on XP and 2003. Starting this month, users can strip the Microsoft browser of the "click to activate" behavior. The intermediary "Click to Activate" control setting of the browser was introduced as a consequence of the legal dispute between Microsoft and Eolas Technologies, over the patent governing the Automatic Component Activation technology built into Internet Explorer.

Following a settlement between the company and Eolas, Microsoft promised to alter the IE ActiveX Update, in order to modify the way that the browser dealt with embedded controls on specific pages. Back at the beginning of November, Pete LePage, IE Senior Product Manager, promised the delivery of the Internet Explorer update concomitantly with the Release Candidates for Windows Vista SP1 and Windows XP SP3. And now, the IE Automatic Component Activation Preview is available for download.

"If you don't recall, in April 2006, we made a change to how Internet Explorer handled embedded controls used on some web pages. Some sites required users to 'click to activate' before they could interact with the control. Microsoft has now licensed the technologies from Eolas Technologies inc, removing the 'click to activate' requirement in Internet Explorer. This change will require no modifications to existing web pages, and no new actions for developers creating new pages. We are simply reverting to the old behavior. Once Internet Explorer is updated, all pages that currently require 'click to activate' will no longer require the control to be activated. They'll just work", LePage added.

If you want to integrate the update into your copy of Internet Explorer, you will have to do it manually. Since this release is nothing more than a preview, it will not be served automatically to all IE6 and IE7 users. In order to access it you will have to go to this link. "The preview we are shipping today will not be widely distributed to users unless they download and install it. This preview is for customers to test this upcoming behavior before it is widely distributed in the April 2008 Internet Explorer Cumulative Update where all customers who install the update will get the change", LePage explained.