Windows: Getting 'Access denied' error trying to open a Help page from web dialogue

I have a web dialogue which works fine on Mac, including opening a Help page in the same (standard SU location) folder as the dialogue page.

Testing it on Windows ran into several problems, now solved, about getting the built in IE module to open the dialogue page in the right version of IE. But when I click on the link to open a Help html page in the same folder, the page doesn’t open.

Trying the web dialogue directly in IE on Win 7, and with the F12 Developer tools showing Console or Debugger, I see there is an Access Denied message.

The plugin is installed as usual in the standard SU Plugins folder, in \Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\Sketchup\Sketchup 2016\Sketchup\Plugins\<plugin name>

What might be causing this? The web dialogue html page includes the first line
<!-- saved from url=(0014)about:internet -->
to avoid problems of sandboxing local files in IE.

The dialogue page opens fine when loaded into Chrome, and the help page link works from there. The Close button on the Help page reopens (as designed) the web dialogue page.

If I try to load the web dialogue page directly into either IE or Firefox, the former opens the page, then overlays it immediately with an error page saying “The webpage cannot be opened” complaining that it can’t understand the skp: protocol. Firefox just displays a similar error immediately, without showing the web dialogue page. Neither says Access denied.

What can I do to get round this?

I’m a mac user, but you could include you help html in a hidden div and just expose it ‘onclick’…

I do that in some of my cross platform ones…

john

Thanks for the thought. I might have to try that. But I’d also like to understand WHY I’m getting the message in IE (which SU uses), but not Chrome.

Further exploration.

If I remove the line <!-- saved from url=(0014)about:internet --> which I put in earlier to help with problems then experienced, and click the Help button, the Help page now loads but unlike the Mac version, the web dialogue page does NOT close.

And IE pops up a message saying that “Internet Explorer restricted this page from running scripts or Active X controls,…” with a button to click to “Allow blocked content.”

If I click that, then click my Close button on the Help page, the web dialogue is reopened, but in a second copy of the page, now opened in IE itself, not running as a web dialogue inside SU. It now also displays the message about blocked content. And when I click to Allow blocked content, I get the former error message about not understanding the SKP protocol!

I’m really not understanding how or why this is working so differently (or not working) in IE than under Mac OS X and Safari, and would welcome any help or tips anyone can offer to further diagnose and fix what is going wrong.

It sounds like “cross-domain security”. Try search on that as a buzzword.

Thanks. I thought that’s what was triggering it.

I think I’ve found a work around for Windows. Still have to check it doesn’t break working on Mac, but it shouldnt