14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft is indicating signs of life on the Internet Explorer front. The Redmond company is cooking the release of the next version of Internet Explorer for the upcoming month. December was confirmed officially as the target for the availability of an official optional preview release of IE. Users will be able to get a taste of the new version of the Redmond company's proprietary browser via Microsoft Download Center. Mozilla is in the final stages of the baking of the first beta build of Firefox 3.0 codenamed Gran Paradiso and the open source browser will move out of Alpha any day now. However, Microsoft's evolution of IE is not correlated with Mozilla and is not a response top the imminent delivery of Firefox 3.0 Beta 1. In fact, the move has nothing at all to do with Internet Explorer 8.
"Back in April 2006, we made a change to how Internet Explorer handled embedded controls used on some webpages. Some sites required users to "click to activate" before they could interact with the control. Microsoft has now licensed the technologies from Eolas, removing the "click to activate" requirement in Internet Explorer. Because of this, we're removing the "click to activate" behavior from Internet Explorer," revealed Pete LePage, IE Senior Product Manager.
In August of this year, Microsoft and Eolas settled on a long and assiduous legal dispute over the Automatic Component Activation technology introduced in Internet Explorer. As a natural consequence of the settlement, the Redmond company will alter the IE ActiveX Update and strip the intermediary "Click to Activate" control setting from the browser. Internet Explorer Automatic Component Activation Preview will be up for grabs in December 2007, with the final version of the browser coming in April 2008.
"So you're probably wondering when we are going to release this update? The first chance will be with an optional preview release, called the Internet Explorer Automatic Component Activation Preview, available in December 2007 via the Microsoft Download Center. Additionally this change will be made part of the next pre-release versions of Windows Vista SP1 and Windows XP SP3. After giving people enough time to prepare for this change, we'll roll this behavior into the IE Cumulative Update in April 2008, and all customers who install the update will get the change," LePage added.
