[WEB4LIB] Re: Resetting the Home Page

[Mike Nyerges]

I don't have the specifics at hand, but running on an NT or Novell network
on the PC side, you could use Windows system policies, using the available
IE policy template, the *.adm, to control the homepage on a user's login.
Even if it's changed, the homepage would always revert to the one set in
the policies when a user logs in. And if you don't use system policies,
since the setting is registry driven, (unlike the prefs.js for Netscape
4x), I suppose you could at some point, at the boot or at the Windows
login, write the settings directly into the registry. Food for thought.
We're planning to switch over to IE from Netscape 4.7 real soon now.
Controling Netscape 3.0 was easy through the registry and a policy
template. Netscape 4 was slightly more challenging running the browser
through the Novell Application Launcher, with the correct prefs.js writing
to the local drive before the application and the prefs.js being erased
when exiting the application--we don't make it easy for the folks without a
signed AUP.

At 10:56 AM 2/24/00 -0800, Andrew Mutch wrote:
>I knew this thread had a familiar ring...
>:)
>I don't recall that a solution was found to stop the behavior.  Is there a
way to
>lock-down the preferences in IE?
>
>Andrew Mutch
>Library Systems Technician
>Waterford Township Public Library
>Waterford, MI
>
>"Charles P. Hobbs" wrote:
>
>> On Thu, 24 Feb 2000, Andrew Mutch wrote:
>>
>> > I've run across another security issue with Internet Explorer.  Some
sites,
>> > such as Excite, provide you the option of resetting your browser's
home page
>> > to their site.  If you grant the site permission to do so, it will
replace
>> > your default with their address.  This is fine and dandy for home
users but
>> > can be a real pain in a library setting.
>>
>> I remember a similar discussion about such. If I recall, half the screens
>> in our library were showing "flightsimmers.net" instead of our home page.
>> A little source code mining turned up some Javascript commands, only
>> available in IE (not Netscape) that allow web pages to reset some browser
>> settings, including the default page.
>>
>> That conversations starts at
>> http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/Web4Lib/archive/9910/0247.html
>
>
Mike Nyerges
Library Media Specialist
Canandaigua Academy Library
http://www.canandaigua.k12.ny.us/academylibrary/
mailto://mnyerges@wfmail.canandaigua.k12.ny.us
mailto://mnyerges@rochester.rr.com