Using the Internet Explorer Administration Kit

Internet Explorer has dozens of settings. To simplify the process of configuring and customizing Internet Explorer for your organization and to add custom features, you can use the Internet Explorer Administration Kit (IEAK).

IEAK allows you to:

• Establish version control across your organization.
• Distribute and manage browser installations centrally.
• Configure automatic connection profiles for users' computers.
• Customize virtually any aspect of Internet Explorer, including home pages, search engines, RSS feeds, favorites, toolbar buttons, Accelerators, security, communications settings, and other important elements.

Naturally, you can also use Group Policy settings to configure each of these settings. In Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS) environments, configuring Group Policy is more efficient than using IEAK. IEAK is extremely useful for configuring workgroup computers, however, and nothing prevents you from using IEAK to help deploy Internet Explorer in AD DS environments.

You can download IEAK from Microsoft at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/ie/bb219517. aspx. After installing IEAK, start the Customization Wizard by clicking Start, pointing to All Programs, clicking Windows IEAK 8, and then clicking Internet Explorer Customization Wizard. The wizard prompts you for detailed information about your organization and how you want to configure Internet Explorer. Most of the wizard pages are self-explanatory. The following pages deserve some extra explanation:

• Media Selection On this page, if you are deploying the settings to only Windows Vista or later computers, you can create a Configuration-Only Package. Select CD-ROM or File if you need to deploy Internet Explorer 8 to earlier versions of Windows also.
• Additional Settings The Control Management settings do not apply to Windows Vista and later operating systems. Instead, you should use the Group Policy settings located in Administrative Templates\Windows Components\Internet Explorer \Administrator Approved Controls (within both User Configuration and Computer Configuration) to enable or disable specific controls throughout your organization.

After you complete the wizard, it saves your settings to the location you specify. You can edit them later using the IEAK 8 Profile Manager. This is useful if you need to make several slightly different variations of your Internet Explorer customizations.