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Yesterday morning we released Microsoft Internet Explorer 8 to the web for Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows Server.  We’ve posted a number of different posts about IE8 over the last few months, however we’ve barely scratched the surface of the new version of Internet Explorer.  Here are...

Hello AskPerf!  My name is Satyajit and I am a Support Engineer on the Performance team.  Today we’re going to discuss the use of a very useful Windows SysInternals tools named Autoruns that we can use to examine programs that start during the boot process or the login process.  This comes...

Today we’re getting you caught up on some of the changes in the Internet Explorer world.  The IE Product team has been posting a lot of information about IE8 recently – here are some of the key posts: IE8 Blocker Toolkit Available : IE8 will be distributed via Automatic Update (AU), Windows Update...

Support for Internet Explorer transitioned from the Performance team to our Developer Support group earlier this year.  Recently, this new team launched their own blog focused on Internet Explorer support issues.  The AskIE blog will be discussing topics from the perspective of Core IE – from IEAK and...

It occurred to me that with so many technical blogs out there, that it might be useful to bring you some posts from our fellow bloggers here at Microsoft that have been published recently … If you haven’t been keeping up with our colleagues over at the Terminal Services blog, then you may have missed...

Privacy.  Personally Identifiable Information.  Choice.  Disclosure.  These are all key concepts in the digital age.  We expose more of our personal data electronically than at any time in our history.  IE8 gives users more choice about controlling what information is shared...

Although Internet Explorer support is no longer part of our portfolio on the Performance team, we do still keep an eye on what’s going on in the world of IE.  The IE team is looking for Beta Testers.  Below is the post from the IE Team Blog : Wanted: IE8 Beta Testers As previously mentioned...

Last week, at the MIX conference in Las Vegas, the Internet Explorer team made several announcements regarding IE8, the first of which was that a Developer Beta (emphasis on the Developer ) is now available.  You can download the beta from the IE8 Beta Site .  The beta is available today for...

In our last few posts on Internet Explorer, we've looked at ActiveX Controls.  Today we're going to take a look at the Basics of Browser Helper Objects (BHO's).  We're not going to cover BHO's and Security in this post, that will be covered in our next post on BHO's. First off, what is a BHO...

One of the most common calls that we get relates to the warning dialogs, the "gold bar" message or even the infamous "Red X" image being displayed where the ActiveX control should be loaded.  In some instances, the problem is caused by a failure of the control itself.  However...

In Part One of our Introduction to ActiveX , we covered the basics of ActiveX controls. Today we're going to go over some ActiveX specifics as they relate to the Internet Explorer environment and the management of ActiveX controls. The default installation location for ActiveX controls is %windir%\Downloaded...

On Tuesday, we wrote about the upcoming changes in behavior for how Internet Explorer handles embedded controls .  Today we're going to discuss the basics of ActiveX controls themselves - what they are and why they are important.  We're not going to go into how to create and code ActiveX controls...

Back in April 2006, Microsoft made a change in how IE handled embedded controls used on some web pages.  These changes resulted in some sites requiring users to "Click to Activate" before they could interact with the control.  Microsoft has now licensed the technologies from Eolas...

Today we're going to talk about SSL Closure Alerts in Internet Explorer.  This is usually manifested as the user getting the "Page Cannot Be Displayed" error when connecting to a secure website hosted on a non-Microsoft Web Server.  Before we get too deep into the analysis though...

Deploying a new Operating System or a new version of Internet Explorer is no easy task at the best of times in a heterogeneous environment.  The problem becomes exponentially more difficult when you consider the myriad of third-party applications in the typical enterprise.  We've posted some...

Although the majority of IE cookie issues are handled by our Developer Support team, every now and then a question about cookies will reach us on the Performance team. Often, the question will revolve around the number of cookies stored per domain. Prior to the August Cumulative Update for Internet Explorer...

A couple of weeks ago we took a look at WinINet . Today, our focus shifts to WinHTTP. The WinHTTP API is designed to provide client side HTTP services to server applications. If you recall from our post, WinINet was designed as an HTTP API client platform that allowed the use of interactive message dialogs...

We often have to work with customers to understand why a specific IE scenario fails. In some instances we may have to enable some custom logging and data collection to get to the root cause. However, understanding why we are doing what we are doing is crucial from our customers' standpoint especially...

There have been several requests for good IE resources - especially resources pertaining to Internet Explorer 7. The majority of these requests are in reference to three areas - Security, Deployment and Developing for IE7. Bearing in mind that the folks on the Performance team are not hardcore web developers...

Today we're going to discuss IE Group Policies. If you're unfamiliar with Group Policies, I highly recommend that you read our earlier post on the Basics of Group Policies . When dealing with IE group policies, there are two types of settings to consider - IE Maintenance and IE Administrative templates...

Today we're going to discuss the IE User-Agent String - a term with which more administrators are becoming familiar since the launch of IE7. The User-Agent string identifies your browser to the server hosting the site that you are visiting. This allows the web server to provide content that is tailored...

On Windows Vista, Internet Explorer 7 runs in Protected Mode, which can help protect users from attack by running the Internet Explorer process with greatly restricted privileges. Protected Mode significantly reduces the ability of an attack to write, alter, or destroy data on the user's machine or to...

Tabbed browsing is a new feature in Internet Explorer 7. One question we are frequently asked by administrators is - "How do I control the tab behavior for my users to present a consistent experience?" We are also asked the same thing by developers who want to leverage this functionality for their applications...

Before looking at the new Phishing Filter for IE7 and what it does, it is important to understand what Phishing is, and some common Phishing techniques. Phishing is a criminal activity. Using social engineering techniques, phishers attempt to fraudulently acquire sensitive information - such as usernames...

One of the more common questions IT Admins and Managers ask us when they call in is "How do we prevent IE7 from installing on our client machines?" Although it seems like a fairly straightforward question there are several scenarios to consider: Scenario 1: If a user gets the update from Windows Update...