Tag Archives: HTTP

Fixing the ‘Do you want to display nonsecure items’ message

April 04th, 2008 - 11:47AM

Have you ever been to a web site and seen this? This warning is triggered in IE if it is displaying a secure HTTPS page that has caused a non-secure (i.e. HTTP based) resource to be downloaded. The message box doesn’t allow the user to control whether the non-secure content should be downloaded, only whether it should be displayed.  This seems rather pointless as the damage may already have been done if the non-secure content was a picture of your passport, bank statement or credit card! However, this is the default setting in IE so it is best to avoid this warning being generated on … Continue reading →

The Performance Benefits of Ajax

April 04th, 2008 - 11:56AM

Web 2.0 is a term often used to describe next generation web sites that have moved beyond the simple page request->process->response cycle and are utilizing services on the web server to return data that can be rendered without making page transitions. The result is often a more responsive user interface that closely mimics a desktop application. The technology to make HTTP calls from JavaScript embedded in an HTML page was first introduced for general use by Microsoft in IE5 in order to support Outlook Web Access way back in 1999. However, the XmlHttpRequest object was not widely used until it was adopted by … Continue reading →

Two Simple Rules for HTTP Caching

December 12th, 2007 - 5:45PM

In practice, you only need two settings to optimize caching: Don’t cache HTML Cache everything else forever “Wooah…hang on!”, we hear you say. “Cache all my scripts and images forever?“ Yes, that’s right. You don’t need anything else in between. Caching indefinitely is fine as long as you don’t allow your HTML to be cached. “But what about if I need to issue code patches to my JavaScript? I can’t allow browsers to hold on to all my images either. I often need to update those as well.” Simple – just change the URL of the item in your HTML … Continue reading →