Microsoft KB Archive/293513

= Availability and description of Internet Explorer 6 =

Article ID: 293513

Article Last Modified on 7/25/2007

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APPLIES TO


 * Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0
 * Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0
 * Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0
 * Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0
 * Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0
 * Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0
 * Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0

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This article was previously published under Q293513





SUMMARY
This article describes additions and changes in Internet Explorer 6, its availability and online support resources, and provides additional information about this release.

NOTE: This final release replaces the Internet Explorer Public Preview releases (versions 6.00.2462.0000 and 6.00.2479.0006). You should uninstall the Public Preview before you install the final version.

For more information about how to uninstall Internet Explorer 6, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

293907 How to uninstall Internet Explorer 6.0



MORE INFORMATION
You can install Internet Explorer 6 on a computer that is running Microsoft Windows 98 or later or Microsoft Windows NT 4.0 or later. You can also install Internet Explorer 6 as an upgrade to any existing version of Internet Explorer. For information about how to download and install Internet Explorer 6, please view the following Microsoft Web site:

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie

Note To perform a download only of Internet Explorer 6, see the following Microsoft Knowledge Base article:

174680 Downloading Internet Explorer for a different operating system

Support Options
For information about support options for Internet Explorer 6, please view the following Microsoft Web site:

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/ie6/support/default.mspx

Internet Explorer 6 includes the following features that were not included in earlier versions of Internet Explorer.

Media Bar
An Explorer bar is a Web page that is contained in a window within the Internet Explorer window. It occupies a vertical pane to the left of the main document pane. Some Explorer bars that you may already be familiar with are Search, Favorites, and History. Internet Explorer 6 adds a Media bar, which replaces the Internet Explorer 5.x Radio bar, which only supports streaming audio. This bar is a new, lightweight multiple-tasking media player that takes advantage of DShow and HTML Plus Time. When you use this bar, you can perform the following actions:
 * Play media without opening new windows.
 * Randomly access local or remote media.
 * Easily return to any media experience.
 * Easily gain access to the latest version of the Microsoft Windows Media Player program.

A new button has been added to the Standard Buttons toolbar in Internet Explorer, which you can use to access the Media bar.

Note The original release of the Internet Explorer Public Preview also included a new Contacts bar, Search the Web bar, News bar, a Personal bar, and the ability to add new HyperText Markup Language-based Explorer bars that can be created by Microsoft or third-party manufacturers. These additional Explorer bars have been removed from the final release as a result of customer feedback.

Toolbars Locked by Default
Internet Explorer toolbars are locked by default and cannot be moved or resized. To unlock the toolbars so that you can move or resize them, right-click a blank area of a toolbar, and then click to clear the Lock the Toolbars check box.

Support for Platform for Privacy Preferences (P3P) Standards
A new Privacy tab has been added to Internet Options to set the level of privacy that you want when you browse by specifying whether Web hosts can collect client information through cookies. Internet Explorer 6 implements the P3P version 1.0 compact policy specification to gather metadata about a Web site's intended use of cookie information. After the metadata is collected, Internet Explorer decides whether to accept or reject cookies on each Internet or restricted Web site that you visit (based on the preferences that you specify on the Privacy tab).

Note All cookies are automatically accepted in the Local Intranet and Trusted sites zones and blocked in the Restricted sites zone. For more information about this issue, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

282846 Privacy tab settings only affect Internet zone

Your cookie settings for previous versions of Internet Explorer are not retained when you upgrade to Internet Explorer 6. For more information about this issue, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

296363 Cookies settings are not retained after you upgrade to Internet Explorer 6

For more information about how to set privacy options and what they mean, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

283185 How to manage cookies in Internet Explorer 6

A status icon that is known as the Privacy icon is included with Internet Explorer 6. This icon is placed to the left of the Lock icon in the status bar when you visit a Web site that does not meet your privacy preferences.

Note The original Internet Explorer 6 Public Preview did not provide the ability to import custom privacy preferences. This functionality has been enabled in the final version.

For more information about P3P, see the following WC3 World Wide Web Consortium Web site:

http://www.w3.org/P3P/

Microsoft provides third-party contact information to help you find technical support. This contact information may change without notice. Microsoft does not guarantee the accuracy of this third-party contact information.

For more information about P3P support in Internet Explorer 6, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

290333 Description of the Platform for Privacy Preferences (290333P) Project

Other Internet Options That Are New in Internet Explorer 6
The following options have been added or changed in Internet Explorer 6 Internet Options.

General Tab
A Delete Cookies button has been added to the General tab of Internet Options.

Security Tab
The setting for cookies that were previously on the Security tab in Internet Explorer 5.x have been removed. You can configure these settings on the Privacy tab in Internet Explorer 6.

For more information about the other changes to Security settings of Web content zones in Internet Explorer 6, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

300443 Changes to Security Settings of Web Content Zones in Internet Explorer 6

Note The Allow META REFRESH setting did not function in the original release of the Internet Explorer 6 Public Preview. This problem has been corrected in the latest version.

Advanced Tab
Enable Third-Party Browser Extensions (Requires Restart)

Note When you click this option, you must restart the computer.

Default=on

This setting allows you to disable third-party Tool Bands and Browser Helper Objects for troubleshooting purposes.

Note When you click this option, you must restart the computer. For further information, see the following Microsoft Knowledge Base article:

298931 How to disable third-party browser features

Force Offscreen Compositing Even Under Terminal Server

Note When you click this option, you must restart the computer.

Default=off

&quot;Compositing&quot; is the process of combining two images to form a new image. The most common compositing operation is an &quot;over,&quot; in which one image is placed over another. Compositing effects can cause flashing when you are running Internet Explorer with Terminal Services. If you enable this option, you can eliminate the flashing but you might severely decrease the performance of Internet Explorer running with Terminal Services. For a sample page that uses compositing effects, see the following Microsoft Web site:

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms532984.aspx

Don't Display Online Media Content in the Media Bar

Default=on

This setting specifies whether you want to display the online Media bar content from the following Microsoft Web site:

http://www.windowsmedia.com/Mediabar/wmc.htm?locale=409

If you click to clear this check box, Internet Explorer displays the offline Media bar content from the Browselc.dll file (res://Browselc.dll/Mboffline.htm).

Enable Automatic Image Resizing

Default=on

This feature automatically resizes images that are opened directly in the browser and are too big to be displayed in the current browser window. The image is automatically resized so that it fits, in its entirety, within the dimensions of the current browser window. Images that are embedded within HTML pages are not automatically resized.

Enable Image Toolbar

Default=on

NOTE: When you click this option, you must restart the computer.

By default, Internet Explorer 6 automatically displays a small toolbar when you pause your mouse pointer over an image on a Web page. This toolbar includes buttons to save, print, or send and e-mail message with that image, or to open your My Pictures folder in another window. To disable this toolbar, click to clear this check box.

See the following Microsoft Knowledge Base article for information about why the image toolbar may not appear even if it is enabled:

303473 Image toolbar does not appear over image in Internet Explorer

Enable Integrated Windows Authentication

Default=off

Note When you click this option, you must restart the computer.

Negotiate/Kerberos authentication is disabled by default on Windows 2000, but you can enable Negotiate/Kerberos authentication when you click to select this check box. Earlier versions of Internet Explorer 5, 5.01, and 5.5 enabled Kerberos authentication by default. For more information about this issue, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

299838 Unable to negotiate Kerberos authentication after upgrading to Internet Explorer 6

Enable HTML-Based Explorer Bars

Note This setting was available on the Advanced tab in the original release of the Internet Explorer 6 Public Preview. This setting has been removed in the latest version.

When you click this option, you must restart the computer.

Default=on

If you click to clear this check box, you cannot use some of the new Explorer Bars or the Add/Remove Explorer Bars command.

Note The second Public Preview release of Internet Explorer 6 (version 6.00.2479.0006) included Advanced options to Enable Smart tags and Show Office XP smart tags.

Internet Explorer Error Reporting
This tool allows you to report unrecoverable errors in Internet Explorer (for example, general protection faults or invalid page faults) to Microsoft over the Internet. For more information about this feature, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

276550 Description and availability of Internet Explorer Error Reporting Tool

Content Advisor Changes
The Content Advisor has been updated to allow you to create a hint to help you remember your password, and blank passwords are no longer allowed, and users who are not administrators (Windows NT or Windows 2000) are prevented from enabling Content Advisor.

NTLM Authentication
NTLM authentication through a proxy (proxy passthrough) is possible with the latest version of Microsoft Proxy Server.

Support for Passport 1.4
Passport 1.4 support is implemented in Wininet.dll.

Virus Protection in Outlook Express 6
Several new features have been added to Outlook Express that are designed to protect you against viruses that may be transmitted through e-mail messages. For more information about these features, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

291387 OLEXP: Using Virus Protection features in Outlook Express 6

General Setup Information
For information about installing Internet Explorer 6, system requirements, and known installation issues, see the Readme.txt file in your Internet Explorer installation folder. The following information covers only behavior that is new or changed from Internet Explorer 5, 5.01, and 5.5.

Setup on Windows 2000 Includes Outlook Express 6
Typical and Full installations are not available for Windows 2000. Internet Explorer 6 installs a minimal set of files on your computer. This set of files includes the Internet Explorer 6 Web browser, scripting support, and Outlook Express 6.

Setup Not Supported on Windows 95
Internet Explorer 6 does not support installation on computers that are running Microsoft Windows 95. You must be running Windows 98 or Windows NT 4.0 Service Pack 6a (SP6a) or later to install Internet Explorer 6.

Setup on Windows NT 4.0 Requires SP6a
You may receive the following error message when you try to install Internet Explorer 6 on a Windows NT 4.0-based computer:

NT4 Service Pack 6a or greater must be installed before The Windows Update: Internet Explorer and Internet Tools can continue.

Internet Explorer 6 requires Service Pack 6a or later on Windows NT 4.0. For more information about how to obtain the latest Windows NT 4.0 service pack, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

152734 How to obtain the latest Windows NT 4.0 service pack

High Encryption Support
If you are running Internet Explorer 5.01 or earlier on a computer that is running Windows 98, Windows 98 Second Edition, or Windows NT 4.0, when you install Internet Explorer 6, you upgrade your computer to 128-bit encryption. If your computer is running Windows 2000, when you install Internet Explorer 6, you do not change the current level of encryption on your computer. You can upgrade Windows 2000 by using the High Encryption Pack that is located on the original installation media and on the Microsoft Windows Update Web site. If your computer is running Windows Me, your computer is already using 128-bit encryption.

Components Not Included
Unlike previous versions of Internet Explorer, version 6 does not include Web folders, FTP folders, MSN Messenger, Microsoft virtual machine (VM) for Java, or NetMeeting 3.x. Existing versions of these programs and features are preserved on upgrade or may be installed by your operating system.

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