Changes to IE8's First Run

This blog post details a change we’re making to IE8’s first run experience, previously described in other posts here and here.  The goal of the IE setup experience is to put IE users in control of their settings and respect existing defaults.  IE will never install, or become the default browser without your explicit consent.  However, we heard a lot of feedback from a lot of different people and groups and decided to make the user choice of the default browser even more explicit. This change is part of our ongoing commitment to user choice and control.

Specifically, users who install IE8 and have another browser set as the default will now see this panel as part of their first run experience:

IE settings wizard default browser question

Users who already have IE set as their default browser won’t see this screen. This panel was actually part of the “Choose custom settings” option, described in this post, “Screen 8.” As part of this change, the “Use express settings” option no longer includes setting IE as the default browser.

We decided to use dynamic updates in order to deliver this change to the market as quickly as possible, rather than re-release IE8 in over 60 languages.  We expect to roll this out in mid-August.  Over 90% of users who run IE8 setup opt-in to dynamic updates in this panel in setup:

IE install screen - install updates

(This will also install the latest security updates as part of setup.)

This change applies not only to IE8 installations on Vista and XP, but also when these users with a non-IE default browser install Windows 7. 

We will make this change available in the next cumulative security update for Internet Explorer, so administrators that regularly deploy security updates throughout their organization can easily incorporate this new behavior.  Administrators can find information about how to manage software and security updates in the Update Management TechCenter on Technet.  Administrators can customize the default browser settings using Set Program Access Defaults

The IE team