in reply to Put name and password in URLs

As of early 2004, Microsoft is removing support for this in Internet Explorer. Here are the details. This is their better fix to the bug that prompted them to tell people to type in URLs.

For those who don't know, they have two reasons for doing this. The first is that users were getting mislead by URLs which used the name:password@ trick to make it look like they were going to a different site than they were really going to. The second is that if a URL includes %01 or %00 in it, then IE truncates the display of the URL there. So there is no way to see the real URL from within IE.

I have not heard of any plans on their part to fix the second bug. Their solution to the first problem personally inconveniences me, but I can understand their justification.

For anyone who used the advice above, please note that it will continue to work in all third-party browsers, ftp clients, software libraries like LWP, etc. But you can't rely on it in Internet Explorer going forward.

  • Comment on Re: Put name and password in URLs - except for IE :-(