Monday, August 08, 2011

IE 9 Security Settings on Server 2008

I do all my dev and testing work in a VM running Server 2008 R2. I inevitably run in to problems with the various default security settings for IE9 on this OS. In today’s incident, I was unable to get IE9 to properly render HTML 5 controls on KendoUI’s demo site. This is a problem since I’m working with Test Studio to record a few tests and it uses IE9 for recording.

Having a highly secured browser on your production boxes is a Good Thing; however, for your dev or testing systems it’s nothing but pain.

Two quick things you can do to ensure you’re able to be as friction-free as possible (well, aside from using a real browser like Firefox or Chrome, that is):

  • Add the sites you’re working with to the Local Intranet or Trusted Sites zone. Tools | Internet Options | Security | Click “Trusted Sites” | Sites | Add. You can use wildcards to add entire domains.
  • Turn off Enhanced Security Configuration. Start Server Manager, click the server, then Configure IE ESC (in the Security Information section). Turn ESC off for both Admin and regular users.

WARNING: You should spend a bit of time understanding what the impacts of this are for your dev/test environment, and you should never, ever do this sort of stuff on a production system.

A picture’s worth a thousand words, ergo:

Shutting off IE's Enhanced Security Config

UPDATED: Fixed busted picture URL. Whoopsies.

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