Pete LePage: A couple of weeks ago, we announced that an optional preview for the Internet Explorer Automatic Component Activation was coming in early December, and I’m happy to say that it is now available. Read Knowledge Base article 945007 for full details, along with links to the specific downloads for each operating system.

If you don’t recall, in April 2006, we made a change to how Internet Explorer handled embedded controls used on some webpages. Some sites required users to “click to activate” before they could interact with the control. Microsoft has now licensed the technologies from Eolas Technologies inc, removing the “click to activate” requirement in Internet Explorer.

This change will require no modifications to existing web pages, and no new actions for developers creating new pages. We are simply reverting to the old behavior. Once Internet Explorer is updated, all pages that currently require “click to activate” will no longer require the control to be activated. They’ll just work.

The preview we are shipping today will not be widely distributed to users unless they download and install it. This preview is for customers to test this upcoming behavior before it is widely distributed in the April 2008 Internet Explorer Cumulative Update where all customers who install the update will get the change.