The BugBlog

IE 8 May Lose Your Webmail

After upgrading to Microsoft Internet Explorer 8, you may lose access to your Webmail. According to Microsoft, IE 8 may be trying to use some old information to reach your mail. Deleting your old browsing history may fix this this. Microsoft shows you how.

IE 8 Doesn't Need the Developer Toolbar

If you had the Microsoft Internet Explorer Developer Toolbar installed on an earlier version of IE, and then you upgraded to IE 8, you will see a warning message that the toolbar is incompatible. The good news is that you don't need it, for the same functionality is built in to IE 8. You can find these tools by pressing F12, or by clicking Tools, Developer Tools on the menu.

IE 8 and Web Site Compatibility

Microsoft says that Internet Explorer 8 does a much better job of implementing web standards. (Most independent reviews would agree with it.) However, there may still be problems at some web sites that had depended upon some sort of kludgey workaround to make up for IE 6 or 7's poor practices. Or in Microsoft's words, "with some sites that still rely on the behavior of earlier versions of Internet Explorer." If you run into problems, turn on Compatibility View on the Tools menu.

IE 8 May Disable Add-Ins

Once you install Microsoft Internet Explorer 8, every time you start the browser you may see a warning message saying all your add-ins have been disabled. Microsoft says to fix this, in IE you should click Tools > Options. Go to the Advanced tab, and click Reset. Microsoft then says to follow the on-screen instructions.

Microsoft Patches IE - All of them

MIcrosoft has issued out-of-cycle security patches for Internet Explorer 5 through 9. This is to patch serious memory corruption bugs that may allow an attacker to take over your computer. "Out-of-cycle" means Microsoft didn't want to wait two weeks for Patch Tuesday, the normal second Tuesday of the month when they normally release their security bulletins. That indicates the seriousness of the bugs. Read more from Microsoft here.

Extra Security Bulletin Coming from Microsoft

The Microsoft Security Response blog says that an out-of-cycle Security Bulletin will be released on Tuesday, July 28. It will fix an issue with Microsoft Visual Studio, and one bug with Internet Explorer. Since this is being released early, instead of waiting for the regular Patch Tuesday, chances are these are critical updates. Find out slightly more here.