Re: can't open ActiveX-based resource in Web browser control using IE7 and IE8 beta1

Re: can't open ActiveX-based resource in Web browser control using IE7 and IE8 beta1
> > any clues very much appreciated

After several hours hacking Anti-virus software, Internet Options'
security settings, toggling pop-up filter etc., I managed to make this
issue go away.

This issue seems to be Internet Explorer 7-specific - symptoms don't
seem to occur using IE 6. Seems to occur whenever an ActiveX is
invoked directly in a WebBrowser container. For example, I'm
experimenting with an SVG resource, using ASV (Adobe SVG Viewer), but
I believe the behavior is the same experienced with Flash, PDF and
other similar resources.

The proposed solution will only work when using well known websites
(URIs) in your application. It consists in setting the target
website(s) in the machine's "Trusted sites" (accessible through
"Control Panel", "Internet Options", "Security", "Trusted sites",
"Sites..."). One may be able to automate this process before launching
your webcontrol: for example, one may first check for IE version equal
or above 7 (using an utility method [2], for example) and then set the
appropriate security setting [3]. Note that I've also tried to achieve
this by playing with custom security level settings of Internet
Options, although I haven't achieved a successful combination which
works...

Possible known alternatives which workaround the symptom (proved to
work although conceptually unpleasant):
 1) Using an HTML wrapper file (which inserts the target file through
an embed or object tag);
 2) Renaming your executable to "iexplore.exe" [1].
Second item makes me wonder if such ugly heuristics (filename???) are
used in MSHTML's (IE's rendering engine) security model...

Though IMHO it's somehow straightforward (following the references
given), I may post code snippets for the solution (unmanaged C) and/
or 1st proposed workaround (HTML) if it sounds interesting.

Hope this helps,

  Helder Magalhães

P.S.: just made a quick experiment using IE8 beta1 [4] and the issues
(and possible workaround) are quite the same so no update in this
matter...

[1] http://forum.avantbrowser.com/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=18584&st=0&sk=t&sd=a&start=24
[2] http://www.physiology.wisc.edu/ravi/Software/ieversion/
[3] http://www.codeguru.com/forum/archive/index.php/t-368335.html
[4] http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2008/03/05/internet-explorer-8-beta-1-for-developers-now-available.aspx
date: Fri, 7 Mar 2008 04:12:28 -0800 (PST) author: HelderMagalhaes