The tastiest dog food yet
This post is intended for IT administrators, but more technical users might also find it useful.
During Internet Explorer 8 development we paid very close attention to Line of Business (LOB) application compatibility for large enterprises. We want IE8 to be an easy drop-in replacement for earlier versions of IE, so that all users can benefit from the improved speed, security and ease of use of IE8.
Like Microsoft, your organization probably depends on a very large number of Line of Business applications – some commercial, some developed in-house – and the browser is an integral part of your IT infrastructure.
During the past year of IE8 development, we tested thousands of LOB applications here at Microsoft to ensure that an IE8 rollout in your organization will be easy – and we think that we’ve succeeded in making IE8 one of the easiest enterprise upgrades yet.
Starting at IE8 Beta 1, we rolled out IE8 to thousands of Microsoft employees and debugged any issues they encountered – a process known as dogfooding (as in eating your own dog food…). It wasn’t without glitches. At some points, Microsoft employees could not view their pay stubs online or schedule an office move. That let us work out the kinks before we shipped, and IE8 is now being rolled out to all employees at Microsoft.
What you need to know
Of course, you want to roll out new software only once your organization is ready. Use the IE8 Blocker Tool to block the IE8 auto-update while you test IE8.
Once you are ready to roll out IE8 via Microsoft Update, remember to roll out Compatibility View List update package along with the actual IE8 package. The Compatibility View package pre-populates the Compatibility View list, so your users will not have to manually set Compatibility View themselves if they encounter issues when browsing popular sites.
As noted previously, Microsoft will update and rerelease the Compatibility View list as needed - be on the lookout for updates to the Compatibility View list.
As for your intranet:
Internet Explorer will render websites in your intranet in IE7 compatibility view mode by default (unless, of course, the site itself or group policy sets a different mode).
This means that compared to IE7, IE8 should not have any major rendering differences on intranet pages. There are some differences, but they should be minor.
Of course, not all LOB applications are on the intranet anymore. If your users use an extranet site that only works in IE7 Compatibility View mode, you have two ways of fixing it:
If you own the site: You could change the site itself, and use the meta tag or the http header to tell IE8 to render the site in IE7 Compatibility View mode.
- or -
If you do not own the site: You could also use group policy to set the site to IE7 Compatibility View mode: Add the TLD of the site to the 'Use Policy List of Internet Explorer 7 sites' setting.
This setting is found in 'Administrative templates, Windows Components, Internet Explorer, Compatibility View' in the Computer or User section of the GPO.
Configuring IE settings
During your rollout testing, you might discover that you have to do some IE configuration to fix some issues.
In general, make as small a change as possible - Don't change IE's global settings for the intranet or Internet zone, as it could have a major impact on IE security or performance on a lot of sites.
The first thing to try is adding the site to the trusted sites zone - this fixes most issues with LOB applications that require more access to your machine. You can use group policy to add sites in your organization to the user’s trusted sites list.
Other things to know:
Sharepoint
If you are admin of an Office SharePoint 2007 server, you'll need to install Service Pack 2. (IE8 uses more connections than IE7 when downloading a site, and this may cause issues when you log out of Sharepoint and log in as another user.)
Session management
IE8 now shares session details between windows - so you can't open two IE windows and log into the same site with different credentials.
If you want to do this, use File - New Session to open a new IE window and start a new IE session where you can use different credentials.
File upload control
For security reasons, IE no longer sends the full file path when you upload a file via the file upload control. To get this behavior back for example.com, add it to the trusted sites list.
Intranet zone
Protected mode is now off for the Intranet zone in IE8 (this is similar to IE6 behavior). If this was an issue for your IE7 rollout, IE8 should be easier in this regard.
asp:menu (ASP.NET WebControls)
If you are using ASP.NET on a web page that is rendering in standards mode (in other words: not on your intranet) - remember to patch the ASP.NET control to work in standards mode. See this blog entry for more details.
Microsoft Office Publisher
If your organization is using Microsoft Office Publisher 2003 or Office Publisher 2007 to generate web content, you’ll need to republish some pages to make them render correctly in IE8. For example, navigation bars and other content might be missing on the page when viewed in IE8. See KB969705 for a workaround.
Visual Studio 2005/2008 wizards
Some Visual C++ wizards do not function correctly after IE8 is installed. To fix this issue, see this Visual C++ Team blog post.
Please let us know about your experiences with rolling out IE8 in your organization.
Thanks,
Frank Olivier
Internet Explorer Compatibility Program Manager
Comments
Anonymous
May 13, 2009
PingBack from http://microsoft-sharepoint.simplynetdev.com/the-tastiest-dog-food-yet/Anonymous
May 13, 2009
I am having an issue getting IE 8 rolled out to my test users. I have created the installer with IEAK and added a custom RSS feed. If you navigate to the file share and run the installer it works fine. When pushing the package out via SMS 2003 SP3 using Builds/Flat the install and all customizations work fine with the exception of that one rss feed it does not show up on the navigation bar nor the rss feeds list. If I use the branding only it works fine. I have rebuilt the package and it still has the same issue.Anonymous
May 13, 2009
IE8 on Win7RC has broken the instal of our (entirely standard and thoroughly ubiquitous) .cab. Typically here: http://www.meadroid.com/scriptx/docs/samples/printcontrol.asp This is generic breakage, and not just us. Where's the bug reporting area for IE8 on Win7RC please. Personal mails to Doug Stamper and Scott Dickens come back as dead. Thanks.Anonymous
May 13, 2009
The comment has been removedAnonymous
May 13, 2009
IE8 totally breaks our companies MS Dynamics timesheet app.Anonymous
May 14, 2009
Lester's question about the IE History bug http://tinyurl.com/dhlthy from Windows XP/IE and Vista/IE being still present in Windows 7 wasn't addressed. Is this bug still present in Windows 7/IE ? If so does the scope of the bug grow further to include the Windows 7 taskbar jump list? I would love to rant about the unsortable-ness of the taskbar itself in the last 12 years but privacy-failures like the IE history bug are much more important at the moment. Can we get clarification from Microsoft/beta testers if this bug still exists? I've copied Lester's original comment below (and re-posted my comment from the link at the bottom because ANY questions asked on this blog that are not in the "latest" post get ignored) Does the "Jump" list show items from "History" that were not generated from IE like IE7/IE8 does on Windows XP(/other versions)? Original Bug Report (http://tinyurl.com/dhlthy) e.g. If I use Firefox or Chrome and download a video that plays in Windows Media Player... then delete the video, and delete my Firefox/Chrome history is it STILL going to show up in my "Jump" list? Ditto for files opened up in exploring windows... e.g. if I open up config.xml in my text editor am I going to see this garbage in my Jump List? src: http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2009/05/11/ie8-on-windows-7-the-new-taskbar.aspxAnonymous
May 14, 2009
https://connect.microsoft.com/IE/feedback/ViewFeedback.aspx?FeedbackID=448103Anonymous
May 14, 2009
@Rob: Please see http://support.microsoft.com/kb/969705.Anonymous
May 14, 2009
Is there any indication when the adm templates will be available or where they are located?Anonymous
May 14, 2009
Dogfooding? Hah. Why is it that even so many MSDN pages won't render proeprly in IE of any version anymore?Anonymous
May 15, 2009
We currently run Solomon DL on a WSS 2.0 server. When you try to create a time card with IE8, nothing happens, the script runs but the webpart does not render. If I open developer tools and select Browswer Mode: 7, then all works fine, but IE8 or IE8 Compatibility Mode does not work. Is this resolved with WSS 2.0 SP2 as well?Anonymous
May 15, 2009
this is way off topic, but i couldn't find any other place to put what i had to say: why is IE8 (32bit) for vista, not compatible with win7? i'm running win7/vista dual boot, and i have ie8 64bit and it runs fine on the vista platform, and consequently i'm asssuming this: ( mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; windows nt 6.1; wow64; trident/4.0; slcc2; .net clr 2.0.50727; .net clr 3.5.30729; .net clr 3.0.30729; media center pc 6.0) ) means, i'm running ie8 64bit. and it's running fine. why can't i get 32bit ie8 to download? better yet, where can i get someone at M$ to hear my cry?Anonymous
May 16, 2009
@dav e: Firstly, you must install the 64bit package on a 64bit OS; the 64bit package contains both 32 and 64bit IE. Secondly (and more importantly for your case) you cannot install the standalone Vista IE8 package for Windows 7, as the Win7 operating system has IE8 built into it, including Windows 7 specific functionality. Lastly, your assumption that the User-Agent string shown means you're running 64bit IE is faulty; see http://www.enhanceie.com/ie/webdev.asp#bitness for more information on how the IE bitness is communicated in the UA string. thx!Anonymous
May 17, 2009
@Joe The IE8 ADMX/ADML template files are installed when you install IE8. Hope that answers your question.Anonymous
May 17, 2009
@Jatinder Great, does this include the .adm files for Windows 2003?Anonymous
May 17, 2009
@Jatinder I just installed I8 on a Windows XP client and unfortunately no adm files were installed. I suppose we must be waiting on Microsoft developing them. Thanks for your help anyway.