Companies that are in the process of planning a Windows 7 migration, will be required to pay some attention to Internet Explorer 8 and web site compatibility. Chris Johnson aka “The App Compat Guy” put together two video’s about how to migrate from Internet Explorer 6 to 8. The videos talk about the potential challenges , testing methods, workarounds and solutions to support companies with a smooth migration.  Thrive Live! Migrating from IE6 to IE8 (Part 1 of 2) and Thrive Live! Migrating from IE6 to IE8 (Part 2 of 2)

Then for those that really want to take a deep dive, I recommend watching the IE 8 Application Compatibility webcast with demos presented by Michel Barnett. You never stop learning…..

I had thought that by now this is something everybody knows, but unfortunately that is not the case, so that is why I post this one today.

By default, Windows Internet Explorer 7 and earlier versions limit the number of files that you can download at one time to two. Windows Internet Explorer 8 limits the number of files that you can download at one time to six. More details here

During an Application Compatibility webcast I attended recently the presenter mentioned the Fiddler Tool. There are many network traffic monitoring Tools out there, but if you are just after capturing HTTP traffic, this one should get your attention.

Fiddler is a Web Debugging Proxy which logs all HTTP(S) traffic between your computer and the Internet. Fiddler allows you to inspect all HTTP(S) traffic, set breakpoints, and "fiddle" with incoming or outgoing data

Fiddler is FREE and can be downloaded from here and some demonstration videos here

While I was preparing my home lab for some Group Policy tests i wanted to perform I got an error when generating a report in the Group Policy Management Console which is running on a Windows Server 2008 with Internet Explorer 8.

The error was: “An error occurred in the script in this page”

A search on the web indicated that this had to do with the Internet Explorer Security Settings, but when I opened the Internet Explorer Security settings I noticed that I could not change them since all buttons were grayed out.

But wait a minute, I’m the Administrator on this box, so why should I not be able to change these settings?. Another search on the web pointed me to the Internet Explorer 8 Enhanced Security Configuration which places the server and Internet Explorer in a configuration that decreases the exposure of servers to potential attacks.

To configure the Internet Explorer Enhanced Security Configuration you must open the Server Manager and start “Configure IE ESC” as shown in the screen shot below.

Then turn of IE ESC for Administrators.

Start Internet Explorer again, and you notice that you can now configure the Security Settings.

I then clicked on “Reset all zones to default level”. The next time I opened the Group Policy Manager, I could run the settings report without any error.

Resources:
Internet Explorer 8 Enhanced Security Configuration

I’ve spend nearly 3 hours in troubleshooting today to find out the reason why a custom IE7 package, that worked fine on Windows XP SP2 would not work on Windows XP SP3.

If you are using a custom Internet Explorer 7 package (created with the Internet Explorer Administration Toolkit) and plan to rebuild your enterprise image with Windows XP SP3, you might be interested in this article.

Although we have seen many creative ways on how to get a browser on Windows 7 E, it looks like the plans for Windows7 E have changed. Read the entire article here

Within our daily life in IT we often find interesting sources of information on the internet or on our company intranet. So after a while, most of us typically end up having a large number of Bookmarks. In my case these are 1168 items.

Yesterday I cam across this nice FREE tool called AM-Deadlnk. With AM-Deadlnk you can check your bookmarks and find out if these are still valid. The utility is smart enough to tell you whether the link is completely dead or if the page has been redirected.

Beside checking the status of Bookmarks AM-Deadlink can find duplicates, download FavIcons and backup your Bookmarks into a ZIP file. Support is provided for Internet Explorer, Mozilla, Firefox and Opera.

Click here to download AM-DeadLink

As a response to the European Antitrust Commission, Microsoft will strip the Internet Explorer from Windows7 SKUs aimed for European markets. For end users this means that unless the hardware vendor has a browser pre-installed, which is going to be very unlikely, users must install a browser themselves.

So how to download and install a browser if you don’t have a browser to access the internet? The geeks among us would probably use an ftp command and download the browser binaries from some ftp server hosting the browser installation sources. But for regular users, the only options available are to download the browser installation sources upfront on another system that has a browser with internet access and store the installation sources on a USB drive or order the installation media at Microsoft. For access to Internet Explorer 8 click here

….. but there is another solution, that is actually quite simple and provides you access to the browser download pages without having a browser installed yet. just follow the instructions described below:

1) Create a new text file on the desktop called browser.hta

2) Edit it with Notepad

3) Add this line:
<iframe src=”http://www.google.com/” width=”100%” height=”100%” />

4) Save the file, close Notepad

5) Double-click anything.hta and go get your browser of choice

Credits for this solution go to my friend Claude Henchoz