Author Archives: ericlaw

Security Zones in Edge

Browsers As Decision Makers As a part of every page load, browsers have to make dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of decisions — should a particular API be available? Should a resource load be permitted? Should script be allowed to run? Should video be allowed to start playing automatically? Should cookies or credentials be sentContinue reading “Security Zones in Edge”

Retiring Internet Explorer

Prelude In late 2004, I was the Program Manager for Microsoft’s clipart website, delivering a million pieces of clipart to Microsoft Office customers every day. It was great fun. But there was a problem– our “Clip of the Day” feature, meant to spotlight a new and topical piece of clipart every day, wasn’t changing asContinue reading “Retiring Internet Explorer”

Capture Network Logs from Edge and Chrome (and Electron)

Problems in accessing websites can often be found and fixed if the network traffic between the browser and the website is captured as the problem occurs. This short post explains how to capture such logs. Capturing Network Traffic Logs If someone asked you to read this post, chances are good that you were asked toContinue reading “Capture Network Logs from Edge and Chrome (and Electron)”

Disabling TLS/1.0 and TLS/1.1 in the new Edge Browser

UPDATE: Timelines in this post were updated on March 31, 2020 to reflect the best available information. Timelines remain somewhat in flux due to world events. HTTPS traffic is encrypted and protected from snooping and modification by an underlying protocol called Transport Layer Security (TLS). Disabling outdated versions of the TLS security protocol will helpContinue reading “Disabling TLS/1.0 and TLS/1.1 in the new Edge Browser”

The Pitfalls of EventSource over HTTP/1.1

While there are many different ways for servers to stream data to clients, the Server-sent Events / EventSource Interface is one of the simplest. Your code simply creates an EventSource and then subscribes to its onmessage callback: Implementing the server side is almost as simple: your handler just prefaces each piece of data it wantsContinue reading “The Pitfalls of EventSource over HTTP/1.1”

AppOrWeb-to-WebApp Communication: Custom Scheme Handlers

I’ve previously written about Web-to-App communication via Application Protocols. App Protocols allow web content to invoke a native application outside of the browser. WebApp advocates (like me!) want to continue to close the native/browser gaps that prevent web applications from becoming full-fledged replacements for native apps. To that end, I’ve recently spent some time lookingContinue reading “AppOrWeb-to-WebApp Communication: Custom Scheme Handlers”

Thoughts on DNS-over-HTTPS

Type https://example.com in your web browser’s address bar and hit enter. What happens? Before connecting to the example.com server, your browser must convert “example.com” to the network address at which that server is located. It does this lookup using a protocol called “DNS.” Today, most DNS transactions are conducted in plaintext (not encrypted) by sending UDP messagesContinue reading “Thoughts on DNS-over-HTTPS”

bye: FTP Support Is Going Away

Support for the venerable FTP protocol is being removed from Chromium. Standardized in 1971, FTP is not a safe protocol for the modern internet. Its primary defect is lack of support for encryption (FTPS isn’t supported by any popular browsers), although poor support for authentication and other important features (download resumption, proxying) also have hamperedContinue reading “bye: FTP Support Is Going Away”

Improving Privacy by Limiting Referrers

Updated July 31, 2020 to reflect changes planned to ship in Chrome 85 and Edge 86. As your browser navigates from page to page, servers are informed of the URL from where you’ve come from using the Referer HTTP header1; the document.referrer DOM property reveals the same information to JavaScript. Similarly, as the browser downloads theContinue reading “Improving Privacy by Limiting Referrers”