The Download Blog

It's been roughly eight years since Microsoft released Internet Explorer 6, but in many ways the company is still very much tied to the aging product.

Although Microsoft has released two major versions of Internet Explorer in the past couple of years, for many, the face of Internet Explorer is still IE 6 in all its tabless glory.

In large part, that's because many of Internet Explorer's users are the ones who tend not to change the browser that comes with their operating system--either because that's the type of consumer they are, or because they are working on a work machine in which they are not able to upgrade to a later version of IE or switch to another browser.

Amy Barzdukas, the general manager for Internet Explorer, said in an interview this week that Microsoft's perception is "being built by a browser that was fine technology eight years ago or a decade ago."

But that's frustrating, particularly since Microsoft has invested a fair amount of effort in the last couple of years trying to rebuild IE after letting it languish for several years. Microsoft added things like tabbed browsing and a phishing filter back with Internet Explorer 7, which debuted in October 2006, and earlier this year launched Internet Explorer 8, with anti-malware features as well as a private browsing option and improved standards support.

Even with that work, though, IE 6 remains not only the most widely thought of version of Internet Explorer, but also the most widely used version of the browser, at least by a narrow margin. According to Net Applications, IE 6 accounts for 27 percent of the browser market, compared to 23 percent for IE 7. Microsoft's new IE 8 has more than 12 percent of the market, while Firefox 3.0--the most widely used version of that product--has 16 percent (See chart below).

(Credit: Net Applications)

Overall, Microsoft has been losing ground for several years to Firefox and other browsers. After reaching near ubiquity in the post-Netscape era, IE's global market share is now less than 70 percent. However, Barzdukas is hopeful that the trend is starting to shift with the release of IE 8.

"To the extent that IE was losing share over the winter, any rate of loss has substantially slowed since we came out with IE 8, and in some geographies IE overall has actually gained significant share," Barzdukas said.

One of the biggest things that could help Microsoft, Barzdukas said, is if more people understood that there were better browser options available from Microsoft. She has taken part of that task upon herself, making a pest of herself when she is at friends' houses for dinner--checking to see what version of the browser they are using.

A growing chorus of Internet users have asked Microsoft why, if it really wants people to move to IE 7 or IE 8, it doesn't just end support for IE 6. After all, there have been plenty of calls for the death of IE 6, particularly from Web developers, who are weary of the work required to make their sites work in multiple versions of Internet Explorer, as well as Safari, Firefox, and other browsers.

Cybercriminals are exploiting a critical hole in Internet Explorer 7 that was patched a week ago by Microsoft, security firm Trend Micro warned on Tuesday.

The malicious code, which Trend Micro named "XML_DLOADR.A," is hidden in a Word document. On unpatched systems, when the file is opened an ActiveX object automatically accesses a Web site to open a backdoor that installs a .DLL (dynamic link library) file that can steal information, according to a Trend Micro blog entry. The code sends stolen data to another Web address via port 443, Trend Micro said.

As a result of the back door, "anybody can run commands on the affected system," said Jamz Yaneza, a senior threat analyst and researcher at Trend Micro.

Microsoft released a security patch for the vulnerability, and others, a week ago. The vulnerability arises from the browser's improper handling of errors when attempting to access deleted objects.

"It looks like a proof of concept or targeted attack," Yaneza said. The exploit is similar to politically motivated attacks that were seen before the Olympics last year in which PDF files and Word documents contained exploit code and automatically connected computers to malicious Web sites, he said.

It appears that the site directed to is in China and there is Chinese terminology in the code, according to Yaneza. That and the fact that the 50th anniversary of the Tibetan uprising is approaching, on March 10, suggests that this attack could be politically motivated as well, he said.

"People need to speed up how they patch their OSes, or turn on auto update in Windows," Yaneza said.

This graphic shows how the new IE7 exploit code works to install a backdoor on an unpatched computer.

(Credit: Trend Micro)

Some people seem to think they have carte blanche to spell any which way they want to when they're on the Internet. But whether you're writing Web mail or IMs, filling out a Web form, or just entering a term in Google's search box, spelling matters.

And that's not just because an abundance of spelling errors can make people think you're an eighth grade dropout. (Nothing against eighth grade dropouts!) It's also because misspellings can prevent you from finding the information you're searching for and lead to e-mail miscommunication.

Firefox 2 and 3 have spell-checkers built in, though they're pretty basic. That's a tad better than Internet Explorer 7, which comes spell-checker-less. Free dictionary add-ons enhance Firefox's spelling abilities, and the free IE7Pro provides IE with a way to minimize Web misspellings.

If you're an iGoogler, there's a great new gadget called SpellBoy that puts a spell-checker on your home page.

Activate Firefox's spell-checker
To enable the spell-checker in Firefox, click Tools > Options > Advanced > General, make sure "Check my spelling as I type" is checked, and click OK. Now you'll see the familiar red dots under words the browser's dictionary lacks (including "Firefox," surprisingly).

If you don't see the red dots under misspelled words, right-click and choose Check Spelling. Now when you right-click a misspelling you'll see a handful of optional spellings at the top of the context menu.

I wasn't particularly impressed with the choices Firefox presented for misspellings, so I downloaded the U.S. English dictionary add-on. While I was at it, I also installed the French dictionary add-on, just in case I bump into Ludivine Sagnier in a chat room someday. Right.

Give IE 7 some spelling skills
One of the many reasons I recommend IE7Pro to Internet Explorer users is the great spell-checker in the add-on. To get it operating, choose Tools > IE7Pro Preferences, click Spellchecking in the Modules pane of the Settings window, and click OK.

I was more impressed by IE7Pro's spelling suggestions than with those offered by Firefox's dictionary. As with Firefox, you can add dictionaries for other languages. Plus, you get all the other great IE7Pro features, including a customizable ad blocker and shortcut-key manager.

Add spell-checking to Internet Explorer 7 via the free IE7Pro add-on.

(Credit: IE7Pro)

Put a spell checker on your home page
You can check your spelling from any browser by adding Christopher Blum's SpellBoy gadget for iGoogle. Type or paste text into the large SpellBoy window and click Check spelling.

The SpellBoy gadget for iGoogle puts a spell-checker on your browser's home page.

(Credit: Christopher Blum)

The gadget gives you a count of possible misspellings and shows each underlined in red. Click one of the entries to see five possible corrections, as well as an empty text box you can use to type your own alternative spelling. Corrected words are shown with a green underline.

Note that this beta has no bells or whistles: You can't add languages or custom dictionaries. There were some comments from early users who claimed they were unable to delete the gadget, but I was able to remove it without any problems. Still, a beta is a beta, so use SpellBoy at your own risk.

IE7 Pro adds a lot of showmanship to the Internet Explorer browser. The freeware add-on has some smart solutions for tabbing, including default settings to open URLs in new tabs and let double-clicking close a tab down.

Here's another pleasant surprise: "Dragging" and "dropping" an in-text link into white space opens the link in a new tab without any mouse work. IE7Pro also borrows from several software concepts to help raise IE7's appeal, including Firefox's, to save and fill forms, and insert user scripts a la Greasemonkey. The MiniDM download manager adds a long-missing tool to IE's options, and the prefetching options makes IE much lighter on its feet.

The list of added features is long, but they're all accessible from a status bar icon that the program installs for you. Right-click on it to get access to mouse gestures, customizable hot keys, and more. Highly recommended.

It may seem as if the whole world is using Firefox, but surveys indicate that nearly 75 percent of Netizens still use Internet Explorer. If you're part of that 75 percent, you need to check out this First Look video for the one plug-in you absolutely must have: IE7Pro.

IE7Pro powers up Internet Explorer with many of the features and functions that were once limited to other browsers, including a session manager, prefetching, and mouse gestures.

The one must-have add-on for Internet Explorer is IE7Pro. It gives Microsoft's browser many of the features that Firefox aficionados consider essential, such as mouse gestures, ad blocking, user scripts, and other basic tweaks. Now IE7 users can add a session manager and prefetching to that list.

IE7Pro's session manager lacks polish but gets the job done.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

Using IE7Pro is a snap. The add-on installs an icon on your IE status bar at the bottom, and you right-click it to access the IE7Pro options. Think of it as a context menu for your plugins. The Settings panel is accessible from that menu or using CTRL+F7 hotkeys.

The session manager is much simpler than the popular Session Manager plug-in for Firefox. It lacks most customizable settings that you might hope it would have, but it does allow IE to restart with your last opened tabs. Users must manually save the SESS file, but that's still a step up from not being able to save them at all.

The prefetching allows IE7 to download pages faster. Simple to configure by checking a box, it allows the browser to preload links and thus download pages faster. Also in this update, the MiniDM download manager gets support for dragging and dropping links.

There are fewer and fewer reasons to make IE7 your first-choice browser, but if you've got to use it for work or some other nefarious purpose, it's almost a crime to not use IE7Pro with it.

Internet Explorer 7 disappointed many of our users by offering far too few features much too late. After all, Firefox was way ahead with tabbed browsing, greater stability, and a seemingly bottomless pit of extensions. Then came IE7Pro, one extension with enough oomph to make IE7 worth using.

IE7's bump up to Version 2.0 doesn't actually add a whole lot more than a chance to remember what we liked about the app in the first place, but there is new support for 64-bit machines, and a hot-key combination (Control+M) that shrinks IE windows to a tray icon. In order to rustle up some revenue while keeping the program free to use, IE7Pro announced it runs search from a Google-powered toolbar, and presumably runs operations from the proceeds. Finally, Version 2 replaces the download manager with a MiniDM that's not actually so mini.

The big show, of course, is IE7Pro's major assist to Microsoft's market-dominating browser. There's a lot here--ad- and Flash-blocking, spell check (which requires installing an OpenOffice.org dictionary,) and tabbing features. Double clicking shuts down a tab, while typing a URL automatically opens it in a fresh tab. That shaves off time and steps in the course of a browsing day.... Read more

Microsoft has removed its Windows Genuine Advantage authentication system from the installation process for Internet Explorer 7.

For the average user, this means a quicker installation time. CNET News.com is reporting that Microsoft's decision was because of enhanced security fixes that replace the need for the WGA. However, some have speculated that Redmond's reasoning may have less to do with consumer protection and more with program distribution: Mozilla's Firefox 2 has eaten somewhere between 10 and 20 percent of the browser market, depending on whose metrics you believe, and that has Microsoft's bigwigs deeply concerned. Throw in the Opera browser aiming at the gaming and mobile markets and Apple's Safari branching out into PC-land, and it looks like IE is taking some hits, and not the kind it wants.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

Mozilla Firefox gets a lot of praise for the countless third-party extensions that add features like FTP, download management, and tab customization to the open-source browser. The most popular browser on the market, Internet Explorer, also has its fair share of add-ons, but nowhere near the number or quality of its competitor.

One new download for Internet Explorer, however, adds a number of valuable features that are only replicated in numerous different Firefox extensions. Among its many enhancements, IE7Pro adds tab management, ad blocking, Flash blocking, crash recovery, and the ability to re-open closed tabs to the Microsoft browser. Even cooler, it allows user-based scripts much like Greasemonkey for Firefox. Again, the scripts aren't nearly as impressive as Greasemonkey, but the idea is a good one.

... Read more