Share via

Application Compatibility Logging In IE7

As Rob pointed out in his last blog post on security and compatibility in IE7, one of the biggest challenges in software development is making the software secure and compatible at the same time. In IE7, we have many new security features that help protect users against various attacks by blocking certain content, but as a consequence, some web applications may no longer work as they used to. To help web developers and IT professional find such compatibility issues, IE7 offers an application compatibility logging feature. When the feature is enabled, the user is notified by an icon in the status bar. Thereafter, if one of the new security features blocks certain content, information about the security feature and the blocked content is created in the Windows Event Log

At the RSA conference, I talked to a customer who reported that one of his pages no longer worked correctly and showed a security warning. He was frustrated that he was seeing this warning that he did not see on IE6 SP1. He did not know what was causing this issue. We found that the warning was due to one of the new security features (local machine zone lock down) first introduced in XPSP2. The Application compatibility toolkit is designed to help you diagnose such issues. When you use this toolkit while viewing your website/web application in IE7, the relevant event log entries are displayed in the toolkit to help you find compatibility issues.

A new article on MSDN named Finding Security Compatibility Issues in Internet Explorer 7 describes how to download and use the toolkit.

 - Tariq

Edit: This version of the toolkit has expired. Please refer to the blog post titled: Microsoft Application Compatibility Toolkit (ACT) 5.0 Beta for the latest version details.

Comments

  • Anonymous
    February 27, 2006
    Good question, Jero ...

  • Anonymous
    February 27, 2006
    See the "Finding Security Compatibility Issues in Internet Explorer 7" article for details on what compat issues are flagged.

  • Anonymous
    February 27, 2006
    Sounds nice.

    Would be great with "Standards Compatibility Logging" aswell.
    Whenever IE7 comes across anything it can't handle or handle badly, such as css, html or javascript the user is notified through a dialog.

    Would greatly improve the ability to throubleshoot your websites, see what you shouldn't use, and help you realiase that plaintext is the only thing that works.

  • Anonymous
    February 27, 2006
    There seems to be a typo at the end of the MSDN article, where it gives the registry key to set.

    HKEY_CURRENT_USER
    SOFTWARE
    Microsoft
    Windows
    Internet Explorer
    Main
    FeatureControl
    FeatureControl
    iexplore.exe = (DWORD) 1

    I'm guessing that second "FeatureControl" should be something else.

  • Anonymous
    February 27, 2006
    Thankful

  • Anonymous
    February 27, 2006
    Okay, Im sorry and this may be out of place but ...

    FOR THE LOVE OF G_D PLEASE UPDATE THE THE GRAPHIC WHEN YOU CLICK-HOLD THE MOUSE WHEEL.

    There, I said. It's over. I feel better now.

    :)

  • Anonymous
    February 27, 2006
    PatriotB, thanks for catching the incorrect registry key issue.  It should be “Feature_Enable_Compat_Logging” in place of second “FeatureControl”.  MSDN folks have been contacted to fix the issue.

  • Anonymous
    February 27, 2006
    I Can't see McAfee VirusScan 10 interface after installing IE7

  • Anonymous
    February 27, 2006
    @Jack--
    That is a known issue that the IE team and McAfee will solve before IE 7 is released... or it could be when IE 7 Beta 2 is released. I don't remember atm, but they are working on it.

  • Anonymous
    February 27, 2006
    We can no longer use salesforce.com as we have in the past.  Is there a fix for this applications?

    Stuart

  • Anonymous
    February 27, 2006
    Stuart, you might want to give another browser a try, Firefox and Opera are both good browsers.

  • Anonymous
    February 28, 2006
    Hi,

    I can't connect to the internet at all with windows media player after installing IE7. File streaming, radio, album art collection are all blocked. It says you must be connected to the internet to do this action...

    After uninstalling IE7, back to normal.

  • Anonymous
    February 28, 2006
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    March 07, 2006
    I am having the same problem as Ray, WMP 10 seems to stop working with IE7.

  • Anonymous
    March 10, 2006
    Same problem as Stu, Mark, and Ray! WMP no longer streams any files now that IE7 is installed. I skipped through some settings, and found nothing. What can I do?

  • Anonymous
    March 10, 2006
    same problem with WMP10 - i changed all security settings in ie7 to the absolute minimum of security to test and still no connecting WMP10 to the internet.

    it seems sometimes that the changes i make are not saving...any registry key quick fixes?

  • Anonymous
    March 11, 2006
    All it takes to get IE7 going with WMP is to go to >Tools>Managa Add-Ons> and allow WMP as an add-on.
    if you do not see the toolbar press the alt key that will temporarily show it.

    Bernie

  • Anonymous
    May 24, 2006
    In my last blog

    post I mentioned how important compatibility is, for example, you might see
    a certificate...

  • Anonymous
    September 13, 2006
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    October 22, 2006
    One of the Microsoft MVPs, Robear Dyer, put together a great list of sites for info and questions about

  • Anonymous
    June 16, 2009
    PingBack from http://fixmycrediteasily.info/story.php?id=1007