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”
Category Archives: browsers
Automatically Evaluating Compressibility
Fiddler’s Transformer tab has long been a simple way to examine the use of HTTP compression of web assets, especially as new compression engines (like Zopfli) and compression formats (like Brotli) arose. However, the one-Session-at-a-time design of the Transformer tab means it is cumbersome to use to evaluate the compressibility of an entire page orContinue reading “Automatically Evaluating Compressibility”
Putting Users First
When I worked on Internet Explorer, the team was proud of the fact that we could claim to be more aligned with our users’ goals than either of our major competitors (both of whom were funded almost entirely by advertising). IE, the story went, was paid for by users who purchased Windows, and thus ourContinue reading “Putting Users First”
My Next Adventure
Back in 2004, I couldn’t get the tiny IE team interested in fixing caching bugs that were causing my team’s website to break in bizarre and unpredictable ways. I figured I’d hop over there, fix some bugs, and move along. I quickly realized that I was hopelessly in love with browsers in general and securityContinue reading “My Next Adventure”
The Sad State of HAR
Spring 2017 Update: Some of these issues have been fixed. The HTTP Archive Format (HAR) was designed to allow tools to exchange network traffic using a standard format; this format is akin to Fiddler’s Session Archive Zip format but is supported natively by browser developer tools. Unlike SAZ files, it is not compressed by default,Continue reading “The Sad State of HAR”
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