Like all technological sites on the web, the snap page of EMCP suffers from it's own problems. And to be fair, some of this is the normal security issues that exist on the web.

You are already aware that viruses lurk every time you link to a site or possibly receive an attachment by Email. All browsers provide a level of security and you can modify this security as needed.

For this tutorial, let's concentrate on site security. Open your (MS) Internet browser and you will see something like what's on the right.

As you can see the security has been set at mid level. The Internet explorer allows security to be set between a very high settig and very low. You should never allow for very low. However, very high has it's own problems.

We should explain to you what this means as to settings. Any coder using an underlying internet language is allowed to open additional windows in your browser and additional objects. Additional windows can be as low level as pop ups that can be upsetting to many users. More sophiticated windows can bring in and apply code and the coder is allowed to set visibility options including hidden, which means that you won't see these intrusions. Your browser attempts to tell you when this is going on since it may (and in a virus case it will) be hidden from you. Setting your security standards to very high requires the browser to give you constant warnings of this type of intrusion. A minimum setting allows the coder to do whatever he wants and you may not like the result.

Such would be the case with the snap2007 site which needs an add-in piece of software to work. With a higher security in place, you will probably be told that this can't be loaded.

One possibility is to drop the security level temporarily to load the snap 2007 add-in and then set it back up again. But, this could be dangerous for in the interim something could slip through. Another possibility is to use the trusted sites portion of your security. Click on the trusted sites icon and the screen will change to what is displayed on the second picture to the right.

This sets security on a per site level. The more comfortable you are with a site, the lower you may set your security level. One factor though: The internet powers to be have set a new standard designated as https instead of http. The more modern IE browsers use https as the default standard and you have to clickoff a checkbox that is not being shown at the bottom of the dialog box for entry of the trusted sites to allow sites designated as Http to be entered.

Another question that comes into play as to the sub hierachal pages i.e. snap2007.emcp.com is on top of http://snap2007.emcp.com/my/ as far as hierarchy is concerned and how is this treated if the first site is entered as a trusted site.

To your instructor, it seemed as if IE6 and 7 needed every page entered as a trusted link. It seems as if IE8 is more forgiving by looking at the root of a site's domain name and then allowing accessability.