Article ID: 945007 - Last Review: October 8, 2011 - Revision: 3.0

An Internet Explorer Automatic Component Activation (IE ACA) update is available to disable the "Click to activate" behavior

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Introduction

Microsoft is releasing an Internet Explorer Automatic Component Activation (IE ACA) update that will disable the “Click to activate” behavior of the Internet Explorer ActiveX update that was originally released in April 2006 in Microsoft Knowledge Base article 912812. This IE ACA Preview update affects the following products:

IE ACA Preview for Internet Explorer 6 for Windows XP SP2
IE ACA Preview for Internet Explorer 6 for Windows Server 2003 SP1
IE ACA Preview for Internet Explorer 6 for Windows Server 2003 SP1, Itanium-based versions
IE ACA Preview for Internet Explorer 6 for Windows Server 2003, x64-based versions
IE ACA Preview for Internet Explorer 6 for Windows XP Professional x64 Edition
IE ACA Preview for Internet Explorer 6 for Windows Server 2003 SP2
IE ACA Preview for Internet Explorer 7 for Windows XP SP2
IE ACA Preview for Internet Explorer 7 for Windows Server 2003 SP1
IE ACA Preview for Internet Explorer 7 for Windows Server 2003 SP2
IE ACA Preview for Internet Explorer 7 for Windows Vista

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MORE INFORMATION

When you deploy the IE ACA update, it disables the "Click to activate" behavior of the Internet Explorer ActiveX update that is contained in update KB942615. The other security updates that are contained in update KB942615 are still present and are still functional.

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We strongly recommend that you deploy this IE ACA update only to computers for testing before the "Click to activate" behavior is permanently removed in the Internet Explorer cumulative update that is planned for April 2008. Removing the "Click to activate" behavior from Internet Explorer will require no changes to existing Web pages. Additionally, the removal of this behavior will not require new actions for developers to create new pages. All pages that previously required the "Click to activate" behaviorwill no longer require that the user manually enables an ActiveX control. ActiveX controls will continue to function as they did before this change was made to the "Click to activate" behavior. For more information about Internet Explorer ActiveX controls, see the following Microsoft Developer Network article:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/ieupdate/ (http://msdn.microsoft.com/ieupdate/)

Notice

Users must deploy the IE ACA update on computers on which Internet Explorer security update MS07-069 is applied. This makes sure that the computers are up to date with functionality that is required and with security fixes. Applying the IE ACA Preview without MS07-069 will not guarantee that Internet Explorer functions correctly.

Although no compatibility risks are expected with the removal of the "Click to activate" behavior, we encourage our partners to test and to report any application compatibility issues that are found to Microsoft Support. Applications are expected to function correctly after the removal of the "Click to activate "behavior.

Web browser hosts

The following hard-coded applications will no longer be opt-in applications to the "Click to activate" behavior:

Windows Explorer
Internet Explorer
MSN Explorer
AOL Explorer
AOL 8.0
AOL 9.0
CompuServe 2000
AIM
NetCaptor
Browse3D
Macromedia Dreamweaver
Macromedia Contribute
Netscape 8 when it uses Internet Explorer as the rendering engine

After you apply the IE ACA update, the following registry subkey that enables the "Click to activate" behavior will no longer be used:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE (or HKEY_CURRENT_USER)\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main\FeatureControl\FEATURE_ENABLE_ACTIVEX_INACTIVATE_MODE

Applications that host the Web Object Control (WebOC) or MSHTML can continue to enable the "Click to activate" behavior by using the DOCHOSTUI flag to enable interactive control blocking. To do this, add the DOCHOSTUIFLAG_ENABLE_ACTIVEX_INACTIVATE_MODE flag to the dwFlags parameter of your DOCHOSTUIINFO structure, as shown in the following example.

HRESULT GetHostInfo(DOCHOSTUIINFO *pInfo) { ... pInfo->cbSize = sizeof(DOCHOSTUIINFO); pInfo->dwFlags = { Other DOCHOSTUIFLAGs } | DOCHOSTUIFLAG_ENABLE_ACTIVEX_INACTIVATE_MODE; ... return S_OK; }

Deployment

We recommend that you apply this update to computers only to test the functionality of your applications and of Web sites.

Users must deploy the IE ACA update on computers on which Internet Explorer security update MS07-069 is applied. This makes sure that the computers are up to date with functionality that is required and with security fixes.

Restart requirement

Installation of this IE ACA update may require a restart if the Mshtml.dll file is being used during installation.