Internet Explorer Drops WGA Requirement

Kelson writes "The Internet Explorer team has updated the installer for IE7. Mostly they've adjusted a few defaults and updated their tutorials, but one change stands out: The installer no longer requires Windows Genuine Advantage validation. Almost a year after its release, IE7 has yet to overtake its predecessor. Was WGA holding back a tide of potential upgrades, or did it just send people over to alternative browsers?"

With ies4linux? A couple minutes

[Nicolas MONNET]

IES4Linux [tatanka.com.br] installs IE on wine in a matter of minutes, no WGA required ... :)

In fact, I ran WGA a few months ago under wine, it validated my non-existent Windows license :)

and menu bar enabled by default (finally!)

[MojoStan]

I think the re-enabled (by default) menu bar is just as important as the dropped WGA requirement. For novice/intermediate Windows users, IE7's hidden menu bar (revealed by pressing "Alt") was needlessly confusing. Every time I've checked a friend's IE7 setup (on both XP and Vista), I've asked if they wanted the menu bar back. Not surprisingly, the answer has been "YES" every time.

I'm guessing Microsoft wanted IE7 (and some of their other apps) to follow Office 2007's lead and get rid of the menu bar. This made sense for Office because the new contextual ribbon interface negates the need for a menu bar. It was hard to believe at first, but Office 2007 really does work better without the menu bar.

However, removing the menu bar from IE7 made no sense IMO. IE7 didn't implement a ribbon interface (which wouldn't work for this app anyway), but they still removed the menu bar and seemingly tried to put all important functions on the button bar. Requiring a keyboard shorcut ("Alt") to access the menu was annoying to me and probably frustrating to novice/intermediate users.

I think this simple change will significantly improve usablility. I'll still be an Opera man, though.

Mozilla ActiveX control

[tepples]

After all, until Firefox implements some kind of MSHTML.DLL replacement scheme (would this be so difficult, really?)

It's so not difficult that it's been done [www.iol.ie], though I don't know how old this is.

What has happened to /.???

[cayenne8]

Speaking of IE.

Like many...I'm stuck using IE6 at work. Something must have changed overnight with Slashdot...maybe some weird new CSS?

Whatever it is...it is really messing up. It is hard to read any article....many comments don't appear to even have a reply button on them.

That..and I'm afraid it looks like /. has implemented a automatic PAGE REFRESH mode? I hope not..I like to keep a browser open on /. all day...but, if it starts auto-refreshing, that can look like too much surfing at work.

A the top of pages I see it autochecks an option to "Try new Slashdot discussion system". I try unchecking it each time to no-avail. I checked my preferences...and it is also set to NOT use the new system, but, it appears the new system is still being fed to me.

Please fix this...it was bad enough that the firehose page has recently been made unusable by IE6...now the normal pages are really screwing up.

I used FF, Safari, and the native KDE browsers at home...and they seem to work fine, but, I've got NO choice at work. Please make /. work like it did before. Simple HTML and CSS are just great....we don't need an ajax Slashdot..it is the content and the people that make the site.....not the fanciness of the site. Especially with all that added 'zing' messes up on a majorly used (unfortunately) browser.

Re:Not likely

[quaketripp]

I basically think if the guys at Firefox were really serious about putting themselves as a true alternative to IE, they would focus a little more on truly replacing IE rather than just being installed side-by-side.

I'm not sure what you even mean by that? The only reason I can't run Firefox alone on a box is because some sites will only code to support IE. How is that Firefox's fault? Does that not show that Microsoft just has an unfar advantage on the market? I mean, I can't even use NetFlix' View NOW! feature through Firefox because you absolutely must use IE for whatever reason, I could go research that part, but coffee drive hasn't kicked in...I digress. The point is Firefox w/ NoScrips and ABP (sssshhhh, don't tell) by far safer than using any Microsoft product to surf the virus/spam/trojan/malicious-script laden interwebs. Boo IE. Yay beer-- er.. Firefox!

Re:A cup of wine

[larry bagina]

(I'm replying to this because I can't find how to reply to the main article under Slashdot's new interface. Where da buttons?!?)

Look at the floating panel on the side ("xx Comments"). At the bottom right side is the reply link. Also, the "more" link loads up new comments without doing a page refresh.

Re:Not likely

[Anonymous Coward]

I think Ubuntu is an excellent alternative for those who can pull it off, but you have to get a Windows computer with a CD burner, get it online, set up a download manager, download Ubuntu over the course of a few days

Or you could request [ubuntu.com] a CD be sent to you free of charge?

Re:Windows 2000

[Anonymous Coward]

Q: Does this work on Windows 2000?

A: "Upgrade" to XP or Vista.

Do you work for Microsoft?

To answer the question posed: They still say XP, Vista or Windows Server are the required OS's. But, people have hacked it to work in Windows 2000 in the past by bypassing windows validation. This version should make that even easier.

If you're just running Windows in a VM, avoid upgrading to XP or especially Vista at all costs. Their resource requirements are MUCH higher than Windows 2000, and when running under Linux or Mac OS, the benefits they provide are overlapping what you can do on the host OS, or they are not available in the client VM anyway. So, the OS costs you a lot more to purchase, eats up more system resources, and provides little or no benefit. Stick with Windows 2000, it lets you run Win32 apps with the minimal overhead, which is what you need in a VM.