Category Archives: bluebadge

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”

Web Developers and Footguns

If you offer web developers footguns, you’d better staff up your local trauma department. In a prior life, I wrote a lot about Same-Origin-Policy, including the basic DENY-READ principle that means that script running in the context of origin A.com cannot read content from B.com. When we built the (ill-fated) XDomainRequest object in IE8, weContinue reading “Web Developers and Footguns”

Extended Validation Certificates – The Introduction

In 2005, one of my first projects on the Internet Explorer team was improving the user-experience for HTTPS sites (“SSLUX”). Our first task was to change the certificate error experience from the confusing and misleading modal dialog box: … to something that more clearly conveyed the risk and which more clearly discouraged users from acceptingContinue reading “Extended Validation Certificates – The Introduction”

Book-Writing: Just Do It!

Sadly, you’re unlikely to get wealthy by writing a book. You should definitely write one anyway. My Background People I respect suggest you shouldn’t write (or buy) books on specific technologies, going so far as to say that writing a book was on their top-10 lists of life regrets. Top-10… whoa! As a consequence, whenContinue reading “Book-Writing: Just Do It!”

Duct Tape and Baling Wire–Cookie Prefixes

Update: Cookie Prefixes are supported by Chrome 49, Opera 36, and Firefox 50. Test page; no status from the Edge team.  A new cookie feature called SameSite Cookies has been shipped by Chrome, Firefox and Edge; it addresses slightly different threats. When I worked on Internet Explorer, we were severely constrained on development resources. WhileContinue reading “Duct Tape and Baling Wire–Cookie Prefixes”

Help–The Whole Web Thinks I’m Using IE7!!!

Every few weeks for the last six or so years, I see someone complain on Twitter or in forums that the entire Internet seems to think they’re running an old version of IE. For instance, an IE11 user on Windows 8.1 might see the following warning on Facebook: These warnings typically occur when the browserContinue reading “Help–The Whole Web Thinks I’m Using IE7!!!”