Internet Explorer Security Options, Part 5

In Parts 2 through 4 of this series, I described the settings in Microsoft Internet Explorer (IE) 5.0. (To locate Parts 1 through 4 of this series, select one of the related articles from the Article Information box at the right.) In Part 5, I'll describe the remaining IE security settings.

Scripting
To access IE's security options for scripting, open IE, go to the Tools menu and select Internet Options, and select the Security tab. Click the zone you want to configure, and click Custom Level to display the Security Settings dialog box. Scroll to Scripting, as Figure 1 shows.

Active scripting. The first setting under Scripting is Active scripting, which you can set to Disable, Enable, or Prompt. If you set Active scripting to Disable, IE doesn't display any warnings and doesn't run any scripts. If you set Active scripting to Enable, IE will run all scripts on the Web pages you visit. For instance, on the Windows IT Security home page, you can enter an InstantDoc ID number to instantly access an article. A client-side Java script checks the format of your article number and notifies you of any errors—you don't have to wait for the Web server to check and format a Web page. If you set Active scripting to Prompt, and you subsequently browse a Web page that has client-side embedded scripts, IE asks you to confirm each script's execution on the page, as Figure 2 shows. For instance, if you set Active scripting to Prompt and you browse Windows 2000 Magazine, the dialog box prompt appears three times. . . .