Download Microsoft Application Compatibility Toolkit 5.5 for Windows 7
The Microsoft Application Compatibility Toolkit (ACT) version 5.5 contains the necessary tools and documentation to evaluate and mitigate application compatibility issues before deploying Windows 7, Windows Vista®, a Windows Update, or a new version of Windows® Internet Explorer® in your environment.
The Microsoft Application Compatibility Toolkit (ACT) 5.5 helps customers understand their application compatibility situation by identifying which applications are compatible with the Windows 7 RC and Windows Vista® operating system and which require further testing. ACT helps customers lower their costs for application compatibility testing, prioritize their applications, and deploy Windows more quickly.
You can use the ACT features to:
- Verify an application’s compatibility with a new version of the Windows operating system, or a Windows Update, including determining your risk assessment.
- Become involved in the ACT Community, including sharing your risk assessment with other ACT users.
- Test your Web applications and Web sites for compatibility with new releases and security updates to the Windows® Internet Explorer® Internet browser.
You can download the Microsoft ACT here
Public beta of Windows 7 from January 7
winfuture.de , a german website reports that it has learnt from it sources that the Windows 7 beta would be available to the public on January 7 the next year,though the beta version would be available to the TAP partners from tomorrow itself.
The beta version would start from the 7K series and the build would be 7000.0.081212-1400,and adding to it,the build would be available in many other languages too.
The site also says that it has unconfirmed news that the Windows 7 would be available on preconfigured computers from November 2009 and would be available for retail in January 2010 almost exactly after 3 years the release of Windows Vista.We too have some unconfirmed news from our sources that Windows Server 7 would be even available for beta release in January next year,so indeed a lot more is coming in January along with the release of Internet Explorer 8 and probably the release of the final versions of Windows Live Wave 3 products
Source- win7.in
IE December Out-of-Band release
Internet Explorer is releasing an out-of-band update available via Windows Update. Alternatively, you can receive this and all other Microsoft updates via the new Microsoft Update. I encourage you to upgrade to Microsoft Update if you haven’t already to ensure that you receive the latest updates for all Microsoft products.
This update addresses one remote code execution vulnerability. The security update addresses the vulnerability by modifying the way Internet Explorer validates data binding parameters and handles the error resulting in the exploitable condition. For detailed information on the contents of this update, please see the following documentation:
This security update is rated Critical for all released versions of Internet Explorer.
Source- IE blog
Microsoft Live Labs releases Thumbtack
Microsoft Live Labs is releasing Thumbtack, an easy way to gather and share links, photos, and text, from different Web sites and save all of the data in the form of a collection to a single place at: http://thumbtack.livelabs.com/. Thumbtack allows users to share and collaborate with others on collections by providing the ability to directly email the content or by allowing them to publish their collection to the Web with a number of options including RSS, Atom, HTML and Internet Explorer 8 Web Slices. Thumbtack collections can also be embedded in personal websites and blogs.
In addition, Thumbtack includes gadgets which enhance and extend the capabilities of Thumbtack and enable people to do more with their content, such as compare different items by price or location or automatically find and map addresses. Clips within Thumbtack can also be annotated with properties and then viewed as a scatter plot or bar graph to help sort, filter and visualize content within a collection.
The team incorporated ideas from the community feedback of the Listas tech preview, which Live Labs released in the fall of 2007. Thumbtack focuses on ways to seamlessly collect and organize information gathered from across the web. Similar to other technology preview releases from Microsoft Live Labs, the team will evaluate user feedback to determine the best places to move forward on Thumbtack, including better ways of collecting clips to further analyze the rich metadata to better support visualization and decision making.
Source- bink.nu
December 2008 Monthly Bulletin Release
The new bulletins for this month are:
· MS08-070: Vulnerabilities in Visual Basic 6.0 Runtime Extended Files (ActiveX Controls) Could Allow Remote Code Execution (932349) which is rated “Critical”
· MS08-071: Vulnerabilities in GDI Could Allow Remote Code Execution (956802) which is rated “Critical”
· MS08-072: Vulnerabilities in Microsoft Office Word Could Allow Remote Code Execution (957173) which is rated “Critical”
· MS08-073: Cumulative Security Update for Internet Explorer (958215) which is rated “Critical”
· MS08-074: Vulnerabilities in Microsoft Office Excel Could Allow Remote Code Execution (959070) which is rated “Critical”
· MS08-075: Vulnerabilities in Windows Search Could Allow Remote Code Execution (959349) which is rated “Critical”
· MS08-076: Vulnerabilities in Windows Media Components Could Allow Remote Code Execution (959807) which is rated “Important”
· MS08-077: Vulnerability in Microsoft Office SharePoint Server Could Cause Elevation of Privilege (957175) which is rated “Important”
In addition, today we’ve published Microsoft Security Advisory 960906 regarding new reports of a vulnerability in the Wordpad Converter for Word 97 files affecting Windows 2000 SP4, Windows XP SP2 and Windows Server 2003 SP1 and SP2. We are aware of very limited and targeted attacks seeking to exploit this vulnerability. The advisory details workarounds that you can evaluate while we develop a security update for this issue.
Source- Technet Blog
IE December Security Update Now Available
The IE Cumulative Security Update for December 2008 is now available via Windows Update. Alternatively, you can receive this and all other Microsoft updates via the new Microsoft Update. I encourage you to upgrade to Microsoft Update if you haven’t already to ensure that you receive the latest updates for all Microsoft products.
This update addresses four remote code execution vulnerabilities. The security update addresses these vulnerabilities by modifying the way that Internet Explorer validates parameters, handles the error resulting in the exploitable condition, and handles extra data when embedding objects in Web pages. For detailed information on the contents of this update, please see the following documentation:
This security update is rated Critical for Internet Explorer 5.01 and Internet Explorer 6 Service Pack 1, running on Microsoft Windows 2000; Internet Explorer 6 running on Windows XP; and Internet Explorer 7. For Internet Explorer 6 running on Windows Server 2003, this security update is rated Moderate. Beta versions of Internet Explorer are not vulnerable.
IE security updates are cumulative and contain all previously released updates for each version of Internet Explorer.
Source- IE Blog
Compatibility View Improvements to come in IE8
The next public update of IE8 (for Windows Vista- and Windows XP-based operating systems as well as the Windows 7 Beta) includes improvements to Compatibility View that help end-users when they visit web sites that are not yet ready for IE8’s new, more standards-compliant defaults. This blog post describes the technical background and how this new functionality works.
A Brief History of Standards, Interoperability, Compatibility, and IE8
As we improve the interoperability of Internet Explorer by delivering better implementations of web standards, some users may face compatibility issues with sites that rely on the behavior of previous versions of Internet Explorer.
With IE8’s Beta 1 release, Microsoft demonstrated its commitment to interoperability by making the most standards-compliant default view for web pages IE’s default. This is a good thing for the next billion web pages. We think that developers will have an easier time building interoperable sites on top of IE8’s strong platform work (like CSS 2.1, a better Document Object Model, ARIA, and cross-domain requests (XDR) and cross document messaging (XDM) and our start on HTML5 support).
Source- IE Blog
IE8 at Add-On Con in Mountain View
A few of the startups building browser Add-Ons have organized the first ever Add-On Con, to take place in Mountain View on Dec 11, 2008. We thought it was such a cool idea that we decided to co-sponsor the event (Mozilla is the other sponsor). We will be giving some sessions about extending Internet Explorer, and Mozilla and Google will be presenting about their respective web browsers. Many companies with successful Add-Ons will be sharing their stories and experiences, so it’s a great education and networking event.
Matt Crowley, Program Manager for Extensibility, will cover all of the extensibility options available in IE8. I will be discussing the lessons learned porting Firefox extensions to IE.
Source- IE Blog
