Internet Explorer Drops WGA Requirement

Kelson writes "The Internet Explorer team has updated the installer for IE7. Mostly they've adjusted a few defaults and updated their tutorials, but one change stands out: The installer no longer requires Windows Genuine Advantage validation. Almost a year after its release, IE7 has yet to overtake its predecessor. Was WGA holding back a tide of potential upgrades, or did it just send people over to alternative browsers?"

Comments

With ies4linux? A couple minutes

[Nicolas MONNET]

IES4Linux installs IE on wine in a matter of minutes, no WGA required ... :)

In fact, I ran WGA a few months ago under wine, it validated my non-existent Windows license :)

and menu bar enabled by default (finally!)

[MojoStan]

I think the re-enabled (by default) menu bar is just as important as the dropped WGA requirement. For novice/intermediate Windows users, IE7's hidden menu bar (revealed by pressing "Alt") was needlessly confusing. Every time I've checked a friend's IE7 setup (on both XP and Vista), I've asked if they wanted the menu bar back. Not surprisingly, the answer has been "YES" every time.

I'm guessing Microsoft wanted IE7 (and some of their other apps) to follow Office 2007's lead and get rid of the menu bar. This made sense for Office because the new contextual ribbon interface negates the need for a menu bar. It was hard to believe at first, but Office 2007 really does work better without the menu bar.

However, removing the menu bar from IE7 made no sense IMO. IE7 didn't implement a ribbon interface (which wouldn't work for this app anyway), but they still removed the menu bar and seemingly tried to put all important functions on the button bar. Requiring a keyboard shorcut ("Alt") to access the menu was annoying to me and probably frustrating to novice/intermediate users.

I think this simple change will significantly improve usablility. I'll still be an Opera man, though.

What has happened to /.???

[cayenne8]

Speaking of IE.

Like many...I'm stuck using IE6 at work. Something must have changed overnight with Slashdot...maybe some weird new CSS?

Whatever it is...it is really messing up. It is hard to read any article....many comments don't appear to even have a reply button on them.

That..and I'm afraid it looks like /. has implemented a automatic PAGE REFRESH mode? I hope not..I like to keep a browser open on /. all day...but, if it starts auto-refreshing, that can look like too much surfing at work.

A the top of pages I see it autochecks an option to "Try new Slashdot discussion system". I try unchecking it each time to no-avail. I checked my preferences...and it is also set to NOT use the new system, but, it appears the new system is still being fed to me.

Please fix this...it was bad enough that the firehose page has recently been made unusable by IE6...now the normal pages are really screwing up.

I used FF, Safari, and the native KDE browsers at home...and they seem to work fine, but, I've got NO choice at work. Please make /. work like it did before. Simple HTML and CSS are just great....we don't need an ajax Slashdot..it is the content and the people that make the site.....not the fanciness of the site. Especially with all that added 'zing' messes up on a majorly used (unfortunately) browser.

Re:A cup of wine

[larry bagina]

(I'm replying to this because I can't find how to reply to the main article under Slashdot's new interface. Where da buttons?!?)

Look at the floating panel on the side ("xx Comments"). At the bottom right side is the reply link. Also, the "more" link loads up new comments without doing a page refresh.