Previously, I’ve written a lot about Application Protocols, which are a simple and popular common mechanism for browsers to send a short string of data out to an external application for handling. For instance, mailto is a common example of a scheme treated as an Application Protocol; if you invoke mailto:someone@somewhere.com, the browser will convertContinue reading “Adding Protocol Schemes to Chromium”
Category Archives: browsers
Recognizing Edge Windows
Yesterday, we had a customer reach out to us for help on an issue they’d encountered while writing code to interact with Microsoft Edge windows. Their script enumerated every window in the system, looking for those with Microsoft Edge in the titlebar. They were surprised to discover that the script didn’t recognize any of theirContinue reading “Recognizing Edge Windows”
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”
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”
Microsoft Edge’s Many Processes
Chromium-based browsers like Microsoft Edge use a multi-process architecture for reliability and security reasons. tl;dr For reliability, Process isolation means that if one process crashes, the entire browser need not go down. For example, if a page on leaky.com has a memory leak that’s so bad that its tab crashes with an out-of-memory error, yourContinue reading “Microsoft Edge’s Many Processes”
Great Bug Reports via “Recreate My Problem” in Microsoft Edge
When you encounter a problem in Microsoft Edge, you can let the team know about it using the … Menu > Help and Feedback > Send Feedback command. Clicking this menu item will open Edge’s feedback wizard, which provides tons of options about what information will be submitted along with your bug report. Generally speaking,Continue reading “Great Bug Reports via “Recreate My Problem” in Microsoft Edge”
View-Source
Chromium offers two ways for an end-user to view the source code of a web page: 1) the Developer Tools, and 2) The longstanding view-source viewer. Of these, the Developer Tools have received almost all of the attention over the last decade, but in this post I want to take a quick look at theContinue reading “View-Source”
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”
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