Category Archives: Internet Explorer

Legacy Entrapment

Where does it all begin?  When does a pattern emerge?  How do we decide that one thing is better than another?  Why do we make the choices we do?

Obviously we can blame our parents first.  That which we know probably started with them.  Then we can blame the media and the Internet for the remaining bits.  We see, we do.  We like to copy that which we have seen.  If we see someone do something and it worked for them, then it should work for us.

This is the nature of primates.  The roots are deep.  It is hard to ignore those aspects of ourselves.  We see, we do.

Sometimes things are designed to be so easy to do it is hard to avoid them.  Once they are used, it is hard to stop.  Things like telephones and televisions come to mind.  Simplicity attracts use.  Use attracts others.  Soon, a large group of customers are avid fans of that which they use.

Enter the entrapment.  Once a user gets hooked on a way something works, the user expects it to always do certain things.  The momentum of the mind will accept minor deviations in future products but will not tolerate having its basic needs met. Continue reading

Internet Explorer Enhanced Security Configuration (IE ESC)

If you ever have to install a Windows server (2008, 2008 R2) and try to use Internet Explorer, you might notice how annoying IE is related to being secure.  Essentially you have to fight it do anything useful.  At one point I was using it to install Chrome to get around the constant security popups.

Here is an example from trying to visit www.citrix.com.

It asks this for each web site that the current web site loads something from.  In this case, I was prompted five times for five different web sites that citrix.com uses.  In some cases it is impossible to keep IE ESC happy and the site never loads properly.

It is for a good cause (server security) but you might as well turn IE off completely.  Administrators are going to expect being able to install and update software from the web.  The web browser plays a key role in doing this.  Having a dysfunctional IE makes the process much more painful.

I briefly have tried to defeat this before.  Nothing worked for me so I gave up on IE and switched to Chrome.  Today, I finally found the right way to switch this off.

Continue reading