What new functionality is added to this feature in Windows XP Service Pack 2

What new functionality is added to this feature in Windows XP Service Pack 2?

Information Bar User Interface

Detailed description

The information bar looks and acts in a similar way to the Outlook 2003 blocked content notification area. It appears below Internet Explorer toolbars and above the Web page in v 919y2413j iew when a notification is present and disappears on the next navigation. The text in the information bar varies, depending on the notification that is provided, and wraps to two lines if the text exceeds the bounds of the notification area. For example, a common notification message is Your current security settings prohibit running ActiveX controls on this page. As a result, the page may not display correctly. If a user controls the focus (or, which object in the browser can receive input) by using the TAB key, the information bar gets focus after the toolbar and before the Web page.

Either clicking or right-clicking on the information bar brings up a menu that relates to the notification that is presented. This menu always contains a link to Information Bar Help, which provides more detailed information about the notification. Additional menu items related to the notification appear above the Help menu item, but information bar menu items that are disabled by the administrator are grayed out.

Users can configure the information bar to play a sound when it appears; the default setting for the sound is On. When the information bar appears, the Windows trust icon appears in place of the Error on page notification on the status bar.

In certain cases, more than one action can be blocked. For example, a pop-up window may be blocked at the same time that an add-on install is blocked. In those cases, the text becomes more generic and the menus merge to show each action blocked at the top level, with each action's menus in a submenu.

There is a custom security zone setting for the information bar that enables users to change the settings of the information bar by security zone. Users can choose to be notified with the information bar or to go back to the behavior of Windows XP Service Pack 1 and get a less prominent notification for file and code downloads.

Why is this change important? What threats does it help mitigate?

In Windows XP Service Pack 2, Internet Explorer may block content that is necessary to complete certain online tasks. The information bar provides a prominent notification that informs users how to get Web pages they trust working again without the more obtrusive prompt that was provided in Windows XP Service Pack 1.

What works differently?

For this information, see the next section, "What existing functionality is changing in Windows XP Service Pack 2?"