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IE9 Final RTW Minor Changes List

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This is the third and last post in the Minor Changes series; it covers changes in the final Release-to-Web (RTW) version of Internet Explorer 9.

The Release Candidate was Platform Complete, meaning that the Internet Explorer team worked hard to avoid making any changes that would impact the predictability of the web platform. Our focus was on fixing reliability and security issues to help ensure that IE9 is the most reliable and secure version of Internet Explorer ever released. As such, today’s list will be shorter than the prior two lists.

Beyond bugfixes, there are other changes that I will not be covering, please do not mistake this for a comprehensive list, and please note that I'm deliberately skipping over the big feature improvements that will be discussed on the IEBlog. Improvements in IE9 that impact issues or features previously discussed on this blog can be found by searching for the tag BetterInIE9.

RTW Tweaks

  • In IE8 and below, if you change the SRC of an image, the Complete property does not get reset. In IE9+, when the SRC attribute is updated, we will reset Complete property.
  • Updated the About Dialog to display the Update Versions information, showing the latest installed cumulative update.
  • The strings application/javascript and application/ecmascript for the SCRIPT TYPE attribute are supported for pages in IE9 Standards Mode (these do not work in legacy modes).
  • Memory leaks in Sidebar gadgets have been mitigated.
  • In IE8 and below, if a OBJECT or APPLET tag was dynamically inserted into an IFRAME by setting innerHTML, a relative codeBaseURL would be incorrectly combined. IE9 now uses the correct base URL.
  • Bad parameter detection was introduced for the HttpOpenRequest API to fix compatibility with buggy applications.
  • When content (image or ActiveX) is missing from a page, the filtering icon will be shown instead of the broken object icon if the TrackingProtection or ActiveX Filtering features are enabled.
  • IE9 now appears in the “Turn Windows Features On or Off” applet.
  • The msPinSite class now works properly on images that have multiple classnames defined.
  • When the user hasany Tracking Protection list enabled, the DNT: 1 request header is added to all outbound HTTP/HTTPS requests.

RTW New APIs

  • Introduced the window.external.msActiveXFilteringEnabled method to allow pages to detect ActiveX Filtering.

  • Introduced the window.external.msTrackingProtectionEnabled method (a simple alias for IE8’s InPrivateFilteringEnabled method) indicating whether TPLs are enabled.

  • Introduced the navigator.msDoNotTrack property indicating whether TPLs are enabled.

  • ActiveX controls can now participate in Tracking Protection and block requests to sites the are blocked by TPL.

    QueryInterface on the site provided to your IOleObjectWithSite for IServiceProvider. QueryService for SID_STrackingProtection, ITrackingProtection Then, from any thread: call GetEnabled() or EvaluateUri() on the API. ::GetEnabled() returns whether Tracking Protection is on. EvaluateUri() returns whether an Uri is considered blocked by Tracking Protection and should not be downloaded (or connected to) by the ActiveX control.

I’ll also mention a few earlier changes that were introduced in the Beta or RC that I overlooked in earlier posts:

  • Support for DirectX Page Transitions was removed for all browser modes.
  • A NoInternetExplorer registry flag was added for Browser Helper Objects designed to run only in Windows Explorer.
  • Introduced the TriggerFileDownload API to allow browser add-ons to trigger a file download without navigating a new tab.
  • In IE9 mode, OBJECT tags hosting HTML are treated as IFRAMES. This enables cross-origin DATA which is blocked in other modes.
  • Non-Internet Explorer hosts of the Web Browser control use software rendering mode by default, even when hardware acceleration is available. Applications can set FEATURE_GPU_RENDERING to opt-in to hardware acceleration, if the user’s hardware is compatible.
  • FEATURE_BROWSER_EMULATION now supports 9000 and 9999 tokens.
  • FEATURE_IVIEWOBJECTDRAW_DMLT9_WITH_GDI allows applications hosting the WebBrowser Control to get legacy rendering behavior when calling IViewObject::Draw.
  • Authenticode signatures using MD2 or MD4 algorithms are rejected (by IE8 and IE9) on Windows 7 SP1.
  • When you use Save Picture As on an image that was delivered with a Vary: * or other header that forbids caching (or an IMG whose source is a DataURI), IE9 will allow you to save the file in PNG format. IE8 and below only offer saving in BMP format.

Other References

I hope you enjoy Internet Explorer 9!

-Eric Lawrence

Comments

  • Anonymous
    March 20, 2011
    Custom URL protocols like abc://welcome which works seamlessly with older version are not working in IE9. Is there a workaround? Thanks and regards, Pooran

  • Anonymous
    March 20, 2011
    @pooran: You'll need to provde more details-- what are the exact repro steps? Application Protocols work just fine.

  • Anonymous
    March 21, 2011
    "Updated the About Dialog to display the Update Versions information, showing the latest installed cumulative update" <applause>  Thanks for this!

  • Anonymous
    March 25, 2011
    Why was the "Completed MB" info removed from the IE9 download manager? Now suppose if I'm downloading a large file typically 1-2 GB. The % indicator moves very slowly for such large files and I can't determine if the download is stuck until the % changes after a while.

  • Anonymous
    March 28, 2011
    What's the alternative for the dropped support on DirectX Page Transitions. These transitions helped the IE flickering going away and now with IE9 the're all back. Are there any workarounds?

  • Anonymous
    March 29, 2011
    @Ambionix: I'd be interested to see the flickering you're referring to. Can you provide an example URL?

  • Anonymous
    March 29, 2011
    Unfortunately i can't give you an url because it's an intranet web application. But i can send you a screen cam recording of the problem. I used the Email Blog Author to give you my email adres. Please reply with a valid email adress, so i can send you an attachement. Thanks in advance ...