Updating browscap.ini for Internet Explorer 8 and 9

I recently updated the Web browser on my Windows Vista computer to Windows Internet Explorer 8, and immediately discovered that I could no longer remotely administer my Windows Media server by using the updated Web browser. When I tried to open the Windows Media Services Web Administration site on the remote Windows Media server, IIS returned a Web page that incorrectly identified the Internet Explorer Web browser as a Netscape Web browser.

This issue occurred because the Windows Media Services Web Administration site (which is hosted by IIS on the remote computer) could not determine the capabilities of my client Web browser. The site's Active Server Pages (ASP) use the BrowserType object in server-side scripts to compare the User-Agent HTTP Header with entries in the IIS browscap.ini file and determine Web Browser capabilities. Unfortunately, the browscap.ini file did not have an entry for Internet Explorer 8.

If you host ASP pages in IIS that use server-side scripts to query browscap.ini for Web browser information, keep in mind that any Web browser that is released after IIS 7 (which contains the most recent version of browscap.ini) may be undetected or incorrectly identified, and Web pages that depend on browser detection may not be viewable. To help alleviate browser-versioning issues, Internet Explorer 8 includes a Compatibility View feature to display Web sites as viewed in Internet Explorer 7. However, for users who overlook this feature, you can replace your browscap.ini file, which is located in %windir%\system32\inetsrv, with an updated version that supports Internet Explorer 8. Click http://www.iis.net/downloads/files/media/browscap.zip to download an updated browscap.ini file in a compressed (zipped) folder.

For more information about updating the browscap.ini file to support a broad variety of user agents, I recommend that you check out the Browser Capabilites Project (http://browsers.garykeith.com/).

Note   A user who recently installed Windows Internet Explorer 9 asked if an updated browscap.ini file would be required to support the new Web browser. We tested the Windows Media Administration Site from a remote computer running the Windows 7 operating system and Internet Explorer 9 and found that the current version of browscap.ini supports this version of the Web browser as well. If you host the Windows Media Administration Site in IIS 7, the browscap.ini file that is installed with the ASP role service for IIS will support both Internet Explorer 8 and 9. -- Dave