just read this article regarding Internet Explorers impending and forced upgrade on XP users. I'm wondering if anyone knows
or has concerns regarding the new browser and how it may interact with our BELOVED TOONTOWN. I'm a little sceeered .
Hubby snickers and says it may affect the game. I told him "don't be mean". Grrrrr. Anyway....talk nerdy to me please.
Tell me it will be ok.

Here is the text of the Washington Post article. I will also cut and paste the link but I do not know if it will work because
you may have to be logged into their site (which isn't a half bad idea IMHO)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/28/AR2006102800029_2.html

Here is the cut and pasted text in case that link doesn't work.
*****************************************************************************************
Must-Have Browser Upgrades

By Rob Pegoraro
Sunday, October 29, 2006; Page F01

Your view of the Web is in for a change -- in some cases, whether you like it or not.

This can happen with either of two new browsers. One's the second major update to Mozilla Firefox in a year.
The other is more of a surprise: It comes from the company that sat out the last half decade of browser innovation, Microsoft.
And it will be automatically installed on Windows XP machines starting next week.

Don't be alarmed. If you're still using Internet Explorer 6, much less any older version, you need this upgrade.
You've been stuck with a browser that lends you too little help in staying on top of the Web, and out of trouble on it.

Competing browsers, such as Firefox, Opera and Safari, have provided solutions for those problems for years.
As a result, Firefox in particular has carved a chunk out of IE's once-overwhelming market share.

But some users can't or won't make the effort to download and install new software. So now Microsoft will do it for them.
Starting Wednesday, its new, Windows XP-only Internet Explorer 7 ( http://www.microsoft.com/ie ) will be automatically
installed on their computers through XP's Windows Update mechanism. (The one exception: An illegitimate copy of XP that fails
Microsoft's "validation" test can't get this version of IE.)

Microsoft's mandatory upgrade is a gutsy, perhaps pushy move. Unlike almost every other patch or bug-fix sent through
Windows Update, IE 7 brings major new features and a new front end. This update forcefully yanks an obsolete browser into
the 21st century -- which may confuse some IE vets.

Users of other browsers, however, may feel right at home. Like them, IE 7 offers tabbed browsing, which cures screen
gridlock by letting you view multiple Web pages in one window, and a search shortcut at the top right that sends a query
to your choice of search engines. It also can subscribe to free Web feeds, which spare your keyboard's refresh key by
letting Web sites tell you when they've posted new items.

Microsoft has made its own tweaks to these borrowed features. For example, if you've opened so many pages in tabs
that you're getting lost, clicking a "Quick Tabs" button fills the window with miniature views of each open page.
And when you preview a Web feed by clicking on an orange icon in IE 7's toolbar, a little search form lets you peek into
its archives to see how often a topic of interest has been covered.

Internet Explorer 7 can also look out for "phishing" sites, the phony pages that impersonate banks and credit card issuers:
If desired, it will check every new page against a blacklist of known phishing offenders, then block your access to any site on it.
Meanwhile, IE 7 highlights legitimate financial sites that use encryption to keep out online snoops by putting a big lock icon
in the address bar.

(It's a sad comment on the state of the Web these days that a browser's selling point can be how well it bars you
from parts of the Web.)

IE 7 adds further defenses against browser hijacking -- attempts by sites to force-feed your computer hostile software
by exploiting flaws in the browser. But since it continues to support one of the most popular hijacking targets, Microsoft's
ActiveX technology, it still presents a bigger target than other browsers.

The Web may look a little sharper overall in this browser, thanks to its improved support for Web standards.
And when you print pages, IE automatically resizes them so they don't get cropped at the sides. You can also resize
a page on the screen by clicking on a magnifying glass icon.

But none of those features will be as immediately noticed as IE 7's new interface. This browser, like many recent Microsoft
releases, ditches traditional text menus in favor of toolbar buttons that sometimes double as drop-down menus. This sleek
design takes up much less space, but it also lacks consistency and bumps some often-used functions, like the home-page button, to odd locations.

In any case, if you've been using IE 6 for years, you may not know where to click when IE 7 lands on your computer.

But rebelling against this forced upgrade by turning off automatic updates in XP is not a good idea. You need Microsoft's security
fixes far more than you need to avoid disruption from a new browser. Besides, you can better express any disapproval by
switching to the new Firefox 2 (available for Win 98 or newer, Mac OS X 10.2 or newer and Linux at http://www.mozilla.com/ ).

This free, open-source browser, used by a growing minority of users, may once have had the reputation of being a cult favorite
among geeks, but compared with IE 7, it's a much easier upgrade. Its interface features a lineup of menus and toolbars that any
IE user would recognize, but it also offers all the power-browsing features that IE 7 has added -- and then some.

For instance, if you close a tab by mistake, Firefox lets you undo it to bring that page back up. Its Web-search form allows
some search engines, such as Google and Yahoo, to complete search terms for you, based on what other users have looked for.
Firefox allows a choice of RSS-feed readers, both other programs and such sites as Google Reader or Bloglines. Like Microsoft's
new browser, Firefox includes a phishing filter -- although it missed a couple of phishing sites that IE 7 flagged.

Firefox 2.0 can also spell-check what you type into Web forms. And if the browser shuts down accidentally (as it did when my
laptop crashed with a "blue screen of death" Thursday night), it will restart where you left off, with the same set of pages you had
open before.

That capability alone makes Firefox 2 worth the upgrade.

Firefox also fits better for an often-overlooked group of users -- everybody still running pre-XP versions of Windows. By releasing IE
7 only for XP, Microsoft has given them the clearest signal possible: Goodbye and good luck.

This can be a lot of change to deal with for people who haven't had to adjust to a new browser in this decade. But it should be welcomed.
It's called competition, and it's about time it returned to the browser market.

Living with technology, or trying to? E-mail Rob Pegoraro atrobp@washpost.com.

I've disabled Microsoft Update, just because I don't want IE7. You should do it just in case IE7 messes up TT. I'm sure there's a copy of IE6 on the internet just in case it messes with our beloved ToonTown.

Can't tell you how it will affect TT, but my guess is that since it is a "forced update," TT will have to update their own code to make it work. It may very well be that in the near future, TT won't support IE6 or previous at all, in which case you will HAVE to switch over.

As for turning off your automatic updates, I don't recommend this. May seem like a good idea at the time, but being a former computer professional and with hubby still a computer professional, anybody that turned off automatic updates in this house would be shot. Ok, maybe not that extreme, but the security updates are just too important.

On a lighter side, the new browser seems like it *could* be a good thing:

This is like the change they made in Microsoft office. Used to be, each "workbook" or "document" you had open in Office was its' own window, but now all workbooks and documents are contained within that particular program's window and you simply tab to get to the appropriate one. Having multiple windows open bogs your system down and this tabbed system could free up some resources. The search engine feature appears as though they have something like the Google Toolbar built into the browser:

Quote:

IE 7 offers tabbed browsing, which cures screen gridlock by letting you view multiple Web pages in one window, and a search shortcut at the top right that sends a query to your choice of search engines. It also can subscribe to free Web feeds, which spare your keyboard's refresh key by letting Web sites tell you when they've posted new items.

Security feature... always a good thing. I'm sure there will be a way to disallow this feature if desired:

Quote:

Internet Explorer 7 can also look out for "phishing" sites, the phony pages that impersonate banks and credit card issuers: If desired, it will check every new page against a blacklist of known phishing offenders, then block your access to any site on it. Meanwhile, IE 7 highlights legitimate financial sites that use encryption to keep out online snoops by putting a big lock icon in the address bar.

Good idea for those that are not advanced users... my mom couldn't print a page without cropping the sides to save her life:

Quote:

The Web may look a little sharper overall in this browser, thanks to its improved support for Web standards. And when you print pages, IE automatically resizes them so they don't get cropped at the sides. You can also resize a page on the screen by clicking on a magnifying glass icon.

Hmmm.... this will take some getting used to. I hope they don't do away with my "hot keys." I rarely use menus or buttons and rely a lot on keyboard shortcuts:

Quote:

But none of those features will be as immediately noticed as IE 7's new interface. This browser, like many recent Microsoft releases, ditches traditional text menus in favor of toolbar buttons that sometimes double as drop-down menus. This sleek design takes up much less space, but it also lacks consistency and bumps some often-used functions, like the home-page button, to odd locations.

I've used Firefox in the past and just didn't like it. Maybe too many years of using Microsoft? Regardless, Firefox appears to give some perks for downloading their update as well, and though you would automatically have IE7 installed on your pc whether you like it or not, you can set your browser of choice to be Firefox. I have no idea how well Firefox works with TT.

Isn't this already out? I'm pretty sure Rubberboots is already using this and likes it. At any rate I remember having a discussion with him about it...anyway he plays TT so maybe he will weigh in on this post.

I used to have mozilla firefox but... i dont know what i did!? I got rid of the annoying updates b/c if you want to move quick it alwys gets in the way!

IE 7 has been out for a couple of weeks...Beta has been out a little longer then that.

The article that is posted is a little misleading as the update will not automatically install IE 7. It will automatically download for the enduser to install when they are ready. Not so much a "forced install and update as a force download.

The following is from Microsofts website:
Automatic Updates Delivery Process
The automatic delivery process will notify users that an update is available and allow users to choose whether to install Internet Explorer 7. The process is described below and screenshots are included at the bottom of this page.

Automatic Updates will only offer Internet Explorer 7 to users with local administrator accounts. Automatic Updates will notify all such users (including those with Automatic Updates configured to automatically download and install updates) when Internet Explorer 7 has been downloaded and is ready to install. The notification and installation process will not start unless and until a user who is a local administrator logs on to the machine. Users who are not local administrators will not be prompted to install the update and will thus continue using Internet Explorer 6.

After clicking on the Automatic Updates notification balloon, users will see a welcome screen summarizing key features of Internet Explorer 7 and presenting three options - Install, Don’t Install, and Ask Me Later.

Here is a Link from Microsofts website with the the complete notes. If you don't want IE 7 to download tell it "no" or "ask me later". I will be doing it later as I have several programs I use that are not ready to work with IE 7.

Hope this helps.

Have a great day.

I had no problems upgrading to IE7 when it came out 2 weeks (or has it been 3) ago. And I also would recommend anyone who uses Internet Explorer as their main browser to surf the internet, to upgrade to the new version. If ONLY for the security updates it brings with it.

The only problem I had with IE7 was on test. As you know, we get that nice little popup on test, about the security certificate. This is because disney is using the same certificate as on www.toontown.com and didn't bother to get a new one for test.toontown.com. So our trusty browser warns us about this.

In IE7, because security is "beefed" up, IE7 will not just give you a popup, but brings you to a page that goes into detail about the security risks associated with logging into a site with an incorrect certificate. GIves you the option of going to your default home page, close the browser or to continue. You click to continue and the login page will load, with the address bar at the top in red and the text "Certificate error" beside it. But you are able to login as normal.

Apart from that, there is no problems with TT. So you can all stop worrying.

Oh, just a little note when installing IE7. During installation, it will ask you to check for updates to your computer from Windows Updates. If you know your computer is up-to-date with the latest from windows update, then you can avoid this step. If you're not updated, then I would suggest going to windows update site and downloading any critical updates that are available for your computer, before installing IE.

And you will be asked to validate your copy of windows during isntallation. So make sure you're not running an illegal copy of Windows.

I've been using it (IE7) since the day it was released and I rather like it. It runs Toontown as flawlessly as IE6 did. (Heh, for whatever that's worth! ) There is an issue of validating your windows but since you're able to use it 30 days after having installed it, which I presume is the case, then there should be no problem with that. You don't need the key; you just need to hit the 'Validate' button.

Yeah as boots said. Validating doesn't require anything on your part. Microsoft just checks your copy of windows is legitimate.

Whew. Thank you for weighing in on this. I appreciate everyones input. Hopefully everyone will have a good experience with it. It sounds like it's going to function like the Mac browser (which is just just so secccssssy *DROOL*). I also noticed that TT is going to be releasing a version for Macintosh. This foils my husbands plan to go to a fully mac household which would have made TT obsolete. Oh well...poor him. LOL

HAHA!! Tell your hubby we're EVERYWHERE and we shall rule the world...muahahahahaha

About finding the Computer codes.. I will tell you how to do it.

Right click my computer on your desktop .. a window will pull up . Under general and under registered to and your name your code will be under that.


Thanks for the info....