Links to ASP.NET application in MS Word document

Question

I am observing a weird behavior when clicking links to my ASP.NET application in MS Word 2003 / 2007 document.

I have IE8 installed. When I click a link in the document the request that is sent has the user-agent IE7(!?). A new session object is created. Right after that out of nowhere a second request appears this time having user-agent IE8.

More over, when I click anything on the requested page, a new session object is once again created, so I cannot rely on anything that has been persisted in the session.

Why is it like that?

Answer 1

Because Word uses built in IE7 library to check URL and if it can connect opens main browser. Probably it is designed to do something internally in Word, when response type is not appropriate to process - open external "default browser" window.