Author Archives: ericlaw

MoarTLS: Non-Secure Download Blocking

With little fanfare, an important security change has arrived on the web. Now, all major browsers (except Safari) block non-secure downloads from a secure page. Browser Version Behavior Edge 94+ Block with right-click “Keep” button Chrome 94 Block Silently Firefox 93 Block with “Allow download” button Brave 1.30.89 Block Silently Opera 79.0.4143.72 Block Silently SafariContinue reading “MoarTLS: Non-Secure Download Blocking”

Accessibility (UIA) Troubleshooting

Last update: Sept 20, 2023 Chromium-based browsers offer a number of accessibility-related features. When you visit about:accessibility, you can see more about the state of these features (similarly, you can find the states in about:histograms/Accessibility.ModeFlag). You can enable features via the Accessibility page, or pass the command line argument –force-renderer-accessibility into the browser. In someContinue reading “Accessibility (UIA) Troubleshooting”

Practical Time Machines

Many “emergency” situations in our modern world would’ve been easy to fix had they been foreseen in advance. If only we’d known what was going to happen, the badness could’ve easily been prevented. Unfortunately, when problems are discovered only “as they happen” in production, everyone must race to minimize the damage and put out theContinue reading “Practical Time Machines”

Determining OS Platform Version

In general, you should not care what Operating System visitors are using to visit your website. If you attempt to be clever, you will often get it wrong and cause problems that are an annoyance for users and a hassle for me to debug. So avoid trying to be nosy/clever if at all possible. ThatContinue reading “Determining OS Platform Version”