One of the most powerful mechanisms for Web-to-App communication is to use an extension that utilizes the NativeMessaging API. The NativeMessaging API allows an extension running inside the browser to exchange messages with a native-code “Host” executable running outside of the browser sandbox. That Host executable runs with the full privileges of the current userContinue reading “Web-to-App Communication: The Native Messaging API”
Author Archives: ericlaw
Font Smoothing in Edge
Text rendering quality is an amazingly complicated topic, with hardware, settings, fonts, differing rendering engine philosophies, and user preferences all playing key roles. In some cases, however, almost everyone can agree that one rendering is superior to another. Consider, for instance, the text of this Gizmodo article as seen on one user’s computer: You canContinue reading “Font Smoothing in Edge”
Managing Edge via Policy
The new Microsoft Edge offers a rich set of policies that enable IT administrators to control many aspects of its operation. You can visit edge://policy/ to see the policies in effect in your current browser: Clicking on a policy name will take you to the documentation for that policy. The Status column indicates whether theContinue reading “Managing Edge via Policy”
Seamless Single Sign-On
There are many different authentication primitives built into browsers. The most common include Web Forms authentication, HTTP authentication, client certificate authentication, and the new WebAuthN standard. Numerous different authentication frameworks build atop these, and many enterprise websites support more than one scheme. Each of the underlying authentication primitives has different characteristics: client certificate authentication isContinue reading “Seamless Single Sign-On”
Beating Private Mode Blockers with an Ephemeral Profile
Back in 2018, I explained how some websites use various tricks to detect that visitors are using Private Mode browsers and force such users to log-in. The most common reason that such sites do this is that they’ve implemented a “Your first five articles are free, then you have to pay” model, and cookies orContinue reading “Beating Private Mode Blockers with an Ephemeral Profile”
Revealing Passwords
The Microsoft Edge browser, Edge Legacy, and Internet Explorer all offer a convenient mechanism for users to unmask their typing as they edit a password field: Clicking the little eye icon disables the masking dots so that users can see the characters they’re typing: This feature can be very useful for those of us whoContinue reading “Revealing Passwords”
Web Proxy Auto Discovery (WPAD)
Back in the mid-aughts, Adam G., a colleague on the IE team, used the email signature “IE Networking Team – Without us, you’d be browsing your hard drive.” And while I’m sure it was meant to be a bit tongue-in-cheek, it’s really true– without a working network stack, web browsers aren’t nearly as useful. BackgroundContinue reading “Web Proxy Auto Discovery (WPAD)”
Same Origin Policy & CORS
I wrote some blog posts back in my IEBlog days and they keep getting lost. So I’m linking them here. I’ll probably add some more new content here in the future. Explaining Same-Origin-Policy Part 0: Origins Part 1: No Peeking Part 2: Limited Write I’ve written some more about CORS since then.
Avoiding Unexpected Navigation
For over twenty years, browsers broadly supported two features that were often convenient but sometimes accidentally invoked, leading to data loss. The first feature was that hitting backspace would send the user back one page in their navigation history. This was convenient for those of us who keep our hands on the keyboard, but couldContinue reading “Avoiding Unexpected Navigation”
Browser Basics: User Gestures
The Web Platform offers a great deal of power, and unfortunately evil websites go to great lengths to abuse it. One of the weakest (but simplest to implement) protections against such abuse is to block actions that were not preceded by a “User Gesture.” Such gestures (sometimes more precisely called User Activations) include a varietyContinue reading “Browser Basics: User Gestures”
