Detecting if a user has chosen to not display unsecure content in IE

Question

I have a page served over https that in some instances can display images pulled from rackspace over http.

In IE this triggers a warning asking if the user would like to display the insecure items.

If the user chooses to display them, all is good. However if they choose not to show them they will find the page looks broken.

I was trying to work on a solution where, if the user chooses to hide them, I detect that and pop up a dialog explaining why the page looks broken and what they need to do to make it work.

I tried adding an image, loaded over HTTP with an onerror event to call the dialog but it doesn't fire when the image is blocked.

I understand that this is not an ideal situation in the first place and it's a problem that will eventually be solved but, in the mean time, any idea how I can detect which option the user has chosen?

Answer 1

I am not at all sure if this will work. If you have Apache installed, may be you can proxy the HTTP URL through a local HTTPS one. Sort of like tunnelling it.

http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/mod/mod_proxy.html

https://www.example.com [main page]
    https://www.example.com/help.html [pass unchanged]
    http://www.othersite.com [gets blocked]

This should be changed to:

https://www.example.com [main page]
    https://www.example.com/help.html [pass unchanged]
    https://www.example.com/secure/?url=www.othersite.com [proxy it]