More IE8 Extensibility Improvements

We’ve made a few improvements to our extensibility model in IE8 RC1 based on feedback we’ve received both internally and externally.

WebBrowser (WebOC) Rendering Mode Changes

About a year ago, I posted an entry talking about WebBrowser Control Rendering Modes in IE8. You may recall that applications using the WebBrowser Control (also known as the WebOC, or Trident hosts) can use a Feature Control Key to select the default rendering mode of webpages they load.

Since our release of IE8 Beta 1, we’ve changed the name of the Feature Control Key that is used to toggle that behavior. The key was previously called FEATURE_NATIVE_DOCUMENT_MODE. IE8 now refers to it by the key FEATURE_BROWSER_EMULATION, and the values for both IE7 Standards Mode and IE8 Standards Mode have changed.

For compatibility purposes, the WebBrowser control will run in IE7 Standards Mode by default if no Feature Control Key value is defined for an application.

To run a WebBrowser control in IE8 Standards Mode, use the following new value into the registry:

[(HKEY_CURRENT_USER or HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE)\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main\FeatureControl\FEATURE_BROWSER_EMULATION]
"MyApplication.exe" = dword 8000 (Hex: 0x1F40)

To run in IE7 Standards Mode, use the following registry value:

[(HKEY_CURRENT_USER or HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE)\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main\FeatureControl\FEATURE_BROWSER_EMULATION]
"MyApplication.exe" = dword 7000 (Hex: 0x1B58)

For IE8 RTM, we’ve added a new “forced” IE8 Standards Mode value. When an application opts into this mode, the Web Browser control will use the IE8 User-Agent string and Browser Emulation mode strictly. It will also ignore fallback features such as the built-in Compatibility View list and the user-generated Compatibility View list when loading pages. To run in “forced” IE8 Standards Mode, use the following registry value:

[(HKEY_CURRENT_USER or HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE)\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main\FeatureControl\FEATURE_BROWSER_EMULATION]
"MyApplication.exe" = dword 8888 (Hex: 0x22B8)

In all of these examples, “MyApplication.exe” refers to the name of your application.

Besides the control key name update for RTM, you may have noticed that these values differ from our Beta 1 release. If you are migrating your application from a Beta or RC1 build of IE to RTM, this value chart will help you replace old rendering mode settings:

For more information on how this will affect the way your application renders webpages, please refer to my older post, disregarding the old Feature Control Key information. If you would like to learn more about compatibility view and the differences between IE7 and IE8 modes, check out Scott’s post on Compatibility View.

ActiveX Logging Using the Application Compatibility Toolkit

The Application Compatibility Toolkit (ACT) helps customers understand their application compatibility situation by identifying which applications are compatible with Vista, IE7, and IE8, and which require further testing. To aid developers and IT Pros with ActiveX installations, we’ve added logging points for installation, instantiation, and loading of ActiveX controls. This data may help in determining whether or not a control is working properly, and may indicate if Line-of-Business applications need to be updated before IE8 is rolled out in enterprise scenarios.

For more information about how to use the Application Compatibility Toolkit, check out Jatinder’s post here. You can also take the toolkit out for a spin yourself by downloading it from Microsoft.com

Deprecation of activex.microsoft.com

A few years back, when ActiveX controls were first emerging as a web technology, Microsoft set up activex.microsoft.com to allow for the distribution of popular controls.

As of IE8, Internet Explorer will no longer check activex.microsoft.com for control installations and updates. From a technical standpoint, this means that the domain was removed from our default CODEBASE lookup locations; when attempting to download a control from webpages, this domain will no longer act as a fallback when no control location is provided or when a provided location fails.

Enterprises using their own codebase download paths will not be affected by this change.

Feedback and Suggestions

I love to hear from developers, IT Pros, and users about feature suggestions, comments, complaints, etc. As always, feel free to email me (mattcrow@microsoft.com) with your thoughts on how we can improve.

Matthew David Crowley
Program Manager
Internet Explorer Extensibility

Update 3/11: Added a sentence indicating that the WebBrowser control runs in IE7 Standards mode by default when there is no Feature Control Key defined.  Also, updated the registry values to indicate they apply in either HKCU or HKLM.

Comments

• Anonymous
  March 10, 2009
  PingBack from http://www.anith.com/?p=17401

• Anonymous
  March 10, 2009
  In RC1 the IE7 Standards mode is the default rendering mode of the WebBrowser control. Are you going to change this and make IE8 Standards the default rendering mode in the final version of IE 8 or in the future versions of the browser?

• Anonymous
  March 10, 2009
  @Florin Yes, IE7 mode is still the default mode for applications; we needed to do this from a compatibility standpoint.  Looking at it from an IE8 and Win7 perspective, we wanted to make sure we didn't break existing applications that depended on the web browser control.  As new versions of apps are released and legacy ones are replaced, we'll revisit which mode will be the default one in future versions of IE.

• Anonymous
  March 10, 2009
  @MattCrow Let developers also choose the rendering mode programmatically with a new API in addition to the registry setting. We also need APIs for tab management, enable/disable/query the state of InPrivate mode, new event when the user refreshes the page, offical APIs for getting the information form SSL (EV) certificates, etc.

• Anonymous
  March 11, 2009
  do I read this correctly that I have to set a GLOBAL value for my emulation mode?  e.g. this value will apply to ALL embeded IE instances? Shouldn't this RegKey be "per" application, not assigned per user in the OS? Or am I missing something here?

• Anonymous
  March 11, 2009
  Which mode allows it to function as well as ff 1.0 from a decade ago?

• Anonymous
  March 11, 2009
  [Update 11/3] IE8 al momento è stato rilasciato in versione RC1. Una delle cose che preferisco del nuovo

• Anonymous
  March 11, 2009
  @Sheldon Yes, this will apply to all embedded IE instances for a given EXE name.  You can assign this key to individual users (HKCU) or to the whole system  (HKLM). I wasn't super clear on those items.  I've sent in an update request for this post to clarify.  Thanks for the comments.

• Anonymous
  March 11, 2009
  so this means donwloadable pogo games might or might not work?

• Anonymous
  March 11, 2009
  so this means donwloadable pogo games might or might not work?

• Anonymous
  March 11, 2009
  Dogfood IE8 at 120dpi or higher, and live with its slow rendering day after day. See how long it takes you before you can't stand it, and force IE to run at 100% (96dpi) on a 125% (120dpi) machine.

• Anonymous
  March 11, 2009
  when are available the final version of ie8?

• Anonymous
  March 11, 2009
  So, when are you guys going to release the official copy of IE8? I was also hoping you guys could find a way to make it render pages faster then it does now. When I open it up sometimes, pages load really fast, then something happens and pages end up loading slow again. I have emptied out my Internet Cache, and that still has not fixed the problem. Keep up the good work!

• Anonymous
  March 11, 2009
  Quite unfortunate that its a per-process setting -- and can't even be set via CoInternetSetFeatureEnabled. Unfortunately it looks like WebOCs used by toolbars or extensions in IE and Windows Explorer are defaulting to IE8 mode, simply because of the process name.  Why wasn't this done on a per-WebOC basis?

• Anonymous
  March 11, 2009
  I can only pray this interface has been guarded against say, people adding keys for "explorer.exe" and "iexplore.exe". Please confirm we won't suffer another 10 years of abusive apps!

• Anonymous
  March 12, 2009
  Microsoft needs to design another extensibility layer for Internet Explorer which allows writing extensions in XAML, XML and JavaScript so lots more free killer and quick extensions can be written. The current compiled/binary extensions model makes development of extensions slow and limited to predefined interfaces.

• Anonymous
  March 13, 2009
  I know its somewhat unimportant, but I found that the ease of use of IE6 far out wieght that of IE7, and used stayed with IE6 just for the purpose of having an easy to use control panel about the address bar. But in IE7 the features I commonly used where moved or taken away, things like the history feature. I haven't gotten a chance to see IE8, but I think it would be simpler to use if the layout was more similar to IE6 than IE7.

• Anonymous
  March 15, 2009
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  March 15, 2009
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  March 15, 2009
  That last comment might have made more sense had another comment I'd posted made it through. In particular, while using the X-UA-Compatibility "meta" tag is documented as an alternative to the registry value, it does not appear to have any effect, at least for me. Which is too bad. Injecting a "meta" tag into the HTML is IMHO not great, but still a better approach than setting some registry value. It allows per-document control over the rendering mode, which is almost as good (and in some cases, better) as per-control control, and provides nearly the same benefit (it's simply less convenient) than an actual API (e.g. new property) in the WebBrowser control. But, it doesn't work, so I'm stuck using the registry value.  YUCK!

• Anonymous
  March 20, 2009
  Now Visual C++'s add variable wizard is broken... seems it opted it self in whatever feature IE team provides. Is Visual C++ used by the IE team? This is the second time IE's new feature break Visual C++'s add variable wizard.

• Anonymous
  March 20, 2009
  I completely second Viktor Krammer and pete.d. Even we had already posted about this on this same blog, on March 28, 2008. The application IMHO needs to be able to programmatically choose the compatibility mode at runtime, last but not least because it may be multitasking. Have you never had TWO browser windows open, showing different content? Other API features would also be desirable.

• Anonymous
  March 23, 2009
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  March 24, 2009
  In fact, I filed a bug today against Visual Studio 2008 that IE8 breaks Smart Devices Wizard. I see this on Vista 64-bit. If anyoone can validate in other environments (like 32-bit), please, validate! https://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedback/ViewFeedback.aspx?FeedbackID=426333 The reason why I filed that for VS2008 is  because of huge gap I see between qualification of MS developers of desktop tools and MS developers of Windows CE tools. So I beleive this is a bug in Visual Studio 2008 for devices. Only because I found solution here http://www.eggheadcafe.com/software/aspnet/32004994/ie8-installation-breaks-v.aspx I did not spend too much time with this problem.

• Anonymous
  March 24, 2009
  @Vyacheslav: We're working with the VS Team to resolve the issue with the VS wizards.  Thanks!

• Anonymous
  March 24, 2015
  The comment has been removed