This change is a result of an adverse verdict against Microsoft in a patent infringement lawsuit brought by the University of California and Eolas Technologies. You can read about this case at http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/p...06EOLASpr.asp. Eolas has asserted that its patent covers one specific mechanism used by Web page authors to embed and automatically invoke certain interactive programs. We made this change to IE to respond to this ruling after considering many factors, including impact on the customer and impact on developers.

This section describes changes to Internet Explorer's handling of ActiveX controls and Java applets. Developers who build ActiveX controls, Web developers who use ActiveX and Java Applets on their Web sites, and developers who host the Web Browser OC or MSHTML should consult this documentation to understand how the user experience is changing, and also how to modify their pages to manage the user experience for their content.

From this site, there are links to Microsoft documentation explaining these changes, a test version of Internet Explorer that shows how it will work when new versions of Windows are released that have this behavior, as well as links to information provided by other companies who produce ActiveX controls or tools.

These changes will not be applied to Outlook or Outlook Express. That said, note that in new versions of Outlook and Outlook Express, for security reasons, ActiveX controls and Java Applets are blocked by default in the restricted zone.

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Requires Windows XP Service Pack 1
This installation package includes the altered files for Windows and Internet Explorer in a Self Extracting ZIP file. First, download the package. It will ask for approval on the License terms, and then for a location to copy the self-extracting ZIP to. Then, to install, run the Self-Extracting zip. It will prompt you to select a directory into which to copy the files, by default called "IE 6 Update". Inside that folder will be a local copy of IEXPLORE.EXE. Double click on that program to run the updated version. Other ways of starting Internet Explorer will run your current system version of Internet Explorer. Other programs that use Internet Explorer technology such as the WebOC or MSHTML will not be changed by installing this way. This installation method should be used by Web Developers who want to test their content running in existing and updated versions of Internet Explorer side-by-side.
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