ericlaw

Trim Your Whitespace

Leading and trailing whitespace are generally invisible. Humans are bad at dealing with things they can’t see. If your system accepts textual codes, or any other human-generated or human-mediated input, you should trim whitespace, whether it’s leading, trailing, or inline (if not meaningful). // Trim leading and trailing whitespace $(‘inputCode’).value = $(‘inputCode’).value.trim(); It’s downright sillyContinue reading “Trim Your Whitespace”

Debug Native Messaging

Prelude Last month, an Enterprise customer reached out to report that a 3rd-party browser extension they use wasn’t working properly. Investigation of the extension revealed that the browser extension relied upon a NativeMessaging Host (NMH) companion that runs outside of the browser’s sandbox. In reviewing a Process Monitor log provided by the customer, the SupportContinue reading “Debug Native Messaging”

Lock down web browsing using Kiosk Mode

Browsers get used in many different environments. Today, I take a look at scenarios where there’s either no interactive user (digital signage) or a potentially malicious user (internet kiosks). Digital Signage (fullscreen) Requirements In the Digital Signage scenario, there’s a full-screen webpage rendering and there are no user-accessible input devices– the canonical example here wouldContinue reading “Lock down web browsing using Kiosk Mode”

getaddrinfo(2022)

New Years’ Resolutions aren’t really my jam. Over the years, I usually idly ponder some vague notion (usually “get in better shape“) in late December, and mostly forget about it by the second week of January or so. This year, I’m taking things a bit more seriously. It’s time to get busy living. Rather thanContinue reading “getaddrinfo(2022)”

Edge Command Line Arguments

Microsoft Edge offers broad variety of configuration options, via This list of sources is roughly in order of stability and supportability– earlier choices change less often (and with more notice) than options I listed later. List of all command-line arguments for Edge? Unfortunately, Edge has not published a list of implemented command line arguments, althoughContinue reading “Edge Command Line Arguments”