Les Actualites

You might have noticed the legal battle between Microsoft and the European Union about the integration of Internet Explorer in the Windows operating system.The European Union is pressuring Microsoft to provide alternatives or ship the next installment without Internet Explorer much like the Media Player-less installations that are available in the European Union as well.

The guys over at AeroXperience seem to have discovered that Microsoft is indeed offering an option to remove Internet Explorer 8 from the Windows 7 operating system. To be precise: The option to remove Internet Explorer 8 has been found in Windows 7 build 7048. It was not there in the beta release of Windows 7 which seems to suggest that Microsoft is working on a way to comply with the European Union in the matter.

It should also be noted that uninstalling Internet Explorer 8 from the Windows 7 installation will not remove all of its components from the computer system. Microsoft has integrated Internet Explorer into the Windows operating system that it would practically require a full rewrite to get rid of it completely.

Only the actual Internet Explorer executable will be removed from the Windows 7 build if the option to remove Internet Explorer 8 is selected. Here are the steps to undertake to remove Internet Explorer from Windows 7:

• Enter the Control Panel and look at “All Control Panel Options”
• Click “Programs and Features”
• In the left sidebar, click “Turn Windows Features On or Off” (you will be thrown a UAC prompt if you elevated UAC)
• Wait for the list to load.
• Look for Internet Explorer 8 in the list and uncheck it.
• Click OK. You will see a prompt notifying you of a reboot.
• The machine will reboot once, configure things, and reboot again.

There is no word yet if the uninstallation of Internet Explorer in Windows 7 affects any other areas of the operating system. Several components but also third party tools use the rendering engine of Internet Explorer.

Source: Windows 7 News

Ed Bott has an interesting article up called Five things every Windows beta tester should know. In hit he defends – somewhat – the decisions made by the Windows 7 development team to run the beta process as they are. It is basically a direct response to community criticism that accused Microsoft of not listening enough to Windows 7 beta testers. It basically boils down to the influence that the beta testers – at least the more prominent ones – actually have and want. There is a discrepancy between those two which is the source of all the criticism that Microsoft is currently facing.

Is it problematic if Microsoft is handing out a more or less feature complete version of Windows 7 to the beta testers? Was not it always the case that beta testers were mainly there for finding bugs and problems in the software rather than suggesting new features? While it surely cannot hurt to provide Microsoft with insight about features or changes to existing applications it should probably not be priority number one. And Microsoft did change some of the behavior in the operating system thanks to criticism and suggestions by beta testers, think of the UAC behavior in Windows 7 for one.

Source: Windows 7 News