Internet Explorer 7 in toolbar mayhem

By anyweb, October 2006.
If you wish to re-publish this article (or parts of), then you are free to do so as long as it links back to here.

Introduction
* part 1 - smileys anyone ?
* part 2 - a handful of toolbars
* part 3 - more toolbars !!
* part 4 - more toolbars plus can we reset Internet Explorer ?

Part 3

more toolbars !!

In Part 1 and Part 2 of this article, I have subjected IE in Vista 5728 to an assault of 'toolbars' and it has coped quite well. In some cases refusing to install them and in every case warning the end user of what is happening.

However one thing bothers me and that's what happens after UAC prompts you for permission to install some software, If you allow it then Internet Exporer remains with 'protected mode OFF' until you restart it. I hope this is fixed in later versions of IE7.

I'm now going to continue attempting to install toolbars in IE7 to see how it copes. Next on my list is a toolbar that many use, Yahoo's own toolbar. After accepting to click on the 'ActiveX control' warning bar at the top of IE, I was then prompted (as usual) to review my decision to run the software via the UAC prompt, I chose 'continue'.

After accepting that, I'm shown another Internet explorer security warning (below) to which I chose 'install'. I want more toolbars !

Next up I was prompted with yet another security warning, and once again UAC popped up (which I wasn't expecting considering my point above...).

Well after accepting the EULA I was now installing the yahoo toolbar along with Norton spyware whether I wanted it or not.

As we can now see, the toolbar installed just fine, and next I'm now going to try and install another toolbar without restarting IE to test my 'protected mode off' concerns.

What would IE be without a google toolbar, so off I go to install it. I clicked on the 'download google toolbar' link and was prompted with a 'file download security warning' to 'run' 'save' or 'cancel'.

Obviously I clicked 'run'.

Yet again I chose 'run' but this time I saw NO UAC SECURITY PROMPTS AT ALL.

After agreeing to google's 'yada yada' EULA, it completed it's installation.

No errors, totally painless, no UAC prompt whatsoever.

Ok, on with the next toolbar, Groowe toolbar.

As before, I will not restart IE as I want to see if UAC comes back or not. After clicking on the download link i was brought to another site and then Internet Explorer crashed (or rather, restarted itself), which is ok as by this time it was unstable (right clicking on a link and choosing open in new tab did nothing).

I tried again, same thing. So I closed IE completely as it was obviously confused. After restarting IE, I got an Internext Explorer Security warning about 'norton'.

I chose to 'allow' to both prompts (it asked again). After doing this I successfully downloaded the Groowe toolbar by accepting the 'popup warning' from Internet Explorer to allow me to download the file.

I now had the file on my desktop and I have to manually run it, so i did. Up pops the usual security warning

followed by UAC asking me to 'allow' it or not. (remember IE was restarted before this...). I clicked allow. Funnily enough, Groowe ended up installing it's toolbar in Firefox which wasn't what I had hoped for, but what the heck, on with the show.

I then set about installing toolbars from the following short list...

altavista toolbar.
AOL toolbar.
Wordz Toolbar.

The above websites were found after a quick google with one of my new toolbars (can't remember which one ;-))

Checkout how IE7 looks now in Vista.