Windows Vista Team Blog : Windows Vista, IE7

IE partners with American Forests for green Carbon Grove campaign

Chris Flores — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 00:02:00 GMT

Last month, Window's Internet Explorer launched Carbon Grove, a green campaign designed to mobilize internet users to pursue reductions in their personal carbon footprints. Today, we are excited to announce that the campaign is expanding to France, and in partnership with American Forest we are taking steps to make the virtual forest a reality through the planting of up to 250,000 real trees in deforested regions across the globe.

Carbon Grove is a carbon footprint reduction reminder service that empowers users to reduce their impact on the environment, and through the use of Windows Internet Explorer 7 with Dynamic Security Protection, users can also help improve the internet environment. Internet Explorer 7 is architected with security features that help defend against malicious software (also known as malware) and better protect against the theft of personal data by fraudulent websites.

By participating in Carbon Grove's campaign, internet users nurture a virtual tree seedling and after six weeks of continued commitment to carbon reducing efforts, Internet Explorer will then sponsor the planting of a tree in a region of need around the world.

To participate in the campaign, users register at www.carbongrove.com and follow the simple steps to plant a virtual tree. Users can then visit their tree once a week and watch it grow. As part of the campaign, Carbon Grove will send weekly reminders to users with updates on their trees' growth and how it has become shelter for virtual animals. The weekly email reminder will feature a link to the user's tree, as well as "green" tips on ways to help the environment in simple but meaningful steps.

Carbon Grove is built on Windows technology and Silverlight, and works with Internet Explorer 7 or Internet Explorer 8 Beta. If IE7 or IE8 Beta is not already installed on the user's PC, both are available as free downloads. You can download IE7 here and IE8 Beta here. With a Beta version of Internet Explorer 8, users can also take advantage of IE8's new WebSlice feature to monitor their tree's progress no matter where they are browsing.

Microsoft encourages employees, customers and partners to understand and embrace sustainability and learn how to improve the Earth's environment and foster a safer internet ecosystem. To plant your virtual tree and help our eco-system, visit www.carbongrove.com.

Me.dium add-in for IE7 connects kindred spirits

Nick White — Tue, 01 May 2007 18:45:00 GMT

At MIX07 this week I came across a cool new plug-in for IE7 called Me.dium that I thought you should know about. It's currently a Beta release but works just fine for me on IE7. While at first blush it might look like an instant messaging competitor, Me.dium's aim is different: it's designed to create connections between people viewing the same web site and uses collaborative filtering to suggest similar sites that might be of interest to its users. Their database collects URLs you've visited and chosen to share, your most recently visited web pages, your friends list and any other profile information you choose to share in order to run this data through their algorithm and generate a list of other sites relevant to one you're currently visiting, and consequently of potential interest to you.

The Me.dium folks, led by founder and inventor Robert Reich, had a session yesterday at this year's MIX where he introduced their creation to the audience and demonstrated its value to the developers, designers and press in attendance. He also announced Beta support for IE7 at the session; the product already supported FF 1.5 and 2.0 prior to this week.

In short, Me.dium demonstrates the fact that our actions and even thoughts are implicitly affected by those around us and in the meantime create a rich data set for predicting end-user behavior. It'll be interesting to see where it and other innovations of its ilk head in the future.

Expectations set for IE Team at MIX07

Nick White — Fri, 20 Apr 2007 22:30:00 GMT

In a recent post, Internet Explorer Program Manager Chris Wilson talks about his team's presence at the upcoming MIX07 event and sets expectations for what his team will cover there. [SPOILER ALERT] The long and short of it is that his team isn't yet prepared to discuss future plans. "We've gathered input from customers for the next version of IE through formal research like user studies and surveys, and also at conferences, comments on the IE blog, and direct emails from you; we will continue to listen at MIX07," Chris writes. Chris says the IE Team "will have more information to share about the next release in the future, but MIX07 is too early yet to discuss specifics."

Just as IE7 was a huge focus for MIX last year, the recent announcement of Silverlight will receive the lion's share of attention at this year's event (there are 16 sessions covering the topic to some degree). Some of the other sessions planned are:

Making Money With RSS with Walter VonKoch
Thinking In CSS: How To Build Great Looking Websites with Molly Holzschlag
How To Make AJAX Applications Scream On The Client with Cyra Richardson
IE7: Past, Present and Future with Chris Wilson

If you're planning to be at MIX07, the IE Team's sessions are a great way for you to understand what they were thinking with IE7 and the challenges they looked to resolve. Be sure to give them feedback and suggestions for their future work. And of course, keep an eye on the IE blog for updates and news.

Application Compatibility Toolkit 5.0 Released

Peg McNicol — Wed, 31 Jan 2007 00:41:00 GMT

Hi I'm Peg McNicol, the product manager for application compatibility in Windows Vista.

In the midst of all the excitement around the general availability of Windows Vista, it's almost strange to talk about IT Pro & developer tools, but if you are an IT Pro, or developer, this should be pretty exciting too. Today the final version of the Application Compatibility Toolkit 5.0 was released. If you are already familiar with ACT 5.0 make sure you download the new bits and the refreshed product guide here. If you want to learn more about the tools and resources around application compatibility for Windows Vista - please visit our TechNet site.

For people new to ACT, it is a single toolset that can help detect, diagnose, and mitigate compatibility issues found in Windows Vista. I think the single coolest feature of this tool is that you can deploy it in your current environment, Windows 2000 or Windows XP and get an inventory of your applications and see how they'll work with Windows Vista. Other highlights include the Standard User Analyzer (SUA) tool; there have been many changes made to improve overall security and reliability in Windows Vista, and this tool looks for possible issues resulting from those changes for users running as Standard Users, which is what every user in a business environment should be in this new paradigm we’ve delivered. There’s also the new Internet Explorer 7 Test Tool to test apps for use with the latest version of Internet Explorer, and the Setup Analysis Tool which detects any issues your setup packages might have with installing on Windows Vista. Finally, IT Pros can use the new and improved Compatibility Administrator to pull compatibility fixes from a database of existing fixes and apply them to apps one-by-one, or in predefined groups.

Overall, this toolkit is going to be a huge timesaver for the IT Pro community and a great resource for developers to analyze and test their apps. Even if you are just starting to think about planning or deploying Windows Vista, you should download ACT 5.0 and start taking an inventory of your current environment so can scope your workload and be ready to go when the time is right for your company.

Download ACT 5.0 now

NewsGator to Utilize IE7 RSS Feed Store

Nick White — Thu, 21 Sep 2006 13:49:00 GMT

Our friends at the Microsoft RSS Team Blog have pointed out the announcement by NewsGator’s Nick Harris of the new NewsGator Desktop Sync Beta. Their Desktop Sync Beta will sync RSS feeds you've saved in the Windows RSS Feed Store (in both Windows Vista or IE7 for Windows XP) with your NewsGator Online account.

If you have a NewsGator Online account, download the beta and give it a shot. If you don’t have a NewsGator Online account, you can sign up at their site.

This is great example of an application designed to take advantage of new technology native to Windows Vista.