Mark of the Web. When to use?
January 28, 2011 9:50 AM Subscribe
Mark of the Web - I am confused. I'm making a site that will be delivered via CD-Rom as an option (for offline use, contains a lot of video and some javascript). It seems MoTW is necessary. Is that right?
In particular, I'm confused because this page seems to suggest that
1) you can't run any Javascript etc without MoTW, but
2) if MoTW is present, then you can't use stylesheets.
Is there a simple explanation somewhere that can tell me when to use it and when not to?
In particular, I'm confused because this page seems to suggest that
1) you can't run any Javascript etc without MoTW, but
2) if MoTW is present, then you can't use stylesheets.
Is there a simple explanation somewhere that can tell me when to use it and when not to?
The easiest solution is to let IE-users know they'll have to allow active content for the time they're using the CD-ROM. They can adjust their security settings to whatever suits them best. If that's not an option...
Burn your product to a CD and test it on a couple of computers, in different versions of IE. Then you'll see what pages in your product trigger the security zone warnings (most likely pages with Javascript), and can apply the MOTW if necessary.
But putting the MOTW on a page tricks the browser into thinking that the site is on the internet, not on a CD-ROM. So if you link directly to a pdf or an mp3 or any file that's not .html, the browser thinks the internet is trying to access your local files and either throws up a warning or just silently fails to open the file. I'm not sure, but I think embedding those files within your html pages will probably be ok.
A reasonably clear explanation of the issue and it's workarounds
Official Microsoft MOTW info
posted by harriet vane at 1:52 AM on January 29, 2011
Burn your product to a CD and test it on a couple of computers, in different versions of IE. Then you'll see what pages in your product trigger the security zone warnings (most likely pages with Javascript), and can apply the MOTW if necessary.
But putting the MOTW on a page tricks the browser into thinking that the site is on the internet, not on a CD-ROM. So if you link directly to a pdf or an mp3 or any file that's not .html, the browser thinks the internet is trying to access your local files and either throws up a warning or just silently fails to open the file. I'm not sure, but I think embedding those files within your html pages will probably be ok.
A reasonably clear explanation of the issue and it's workarounds
Official Microsoft MOTW info
posted by harriet vane at 1:52 AM on January 29, 2011
This thread is closed to new comments.
From the link that you posted,
"Alternatively you can avoid adding the mark of the web to your page, and re-configure the security settings of the local zone to allow running of JavaScript and/or other active content from your local drive from the Internet Options of Internet Explorer."
When deploying the CD-ROM, under System Requirements, mention that users have to allow active content for the duration of running this CD-ROM. This is fairly common.
On a separate note, please do test with other browsers before deploying.
posted by theobserver at 9:56 AM on January 28, 2011