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• ie7 Deployment Troubleshooting Tips and Tricks

motw (Mark of the Web)

The Mark of the Web (motw) is a feature of Windows Internet Explorer that enhances security enabling ie to force documents to run in the security zone of the location the document was saved from, as long as that zone is more restrictive than the Local Machine zone, instead of the Local Machine zone. Essentially motw lets you test documents in the security zones where they are intended to run; adding motw to your documents also enables fully testing compatibility with the user's security settings.

motw is merely an html comment in a document; upon opening the document from a local machine, ie references the comment to determine which security zone to run the document; motw comments are valid if the following rules are applied:

• The comment must start with <!-- saved from url=
• The comment must end with -->
• The comment must contain a value indicating the string length of the url that follows, in the form (####). Be aware that the length in (####) can be less than the length of the url; however ie only uses as many characters as are indicated to map the file to a security zone. At a minimum, the string length should indicate the number of characters in the complete url, up to the end of the top-level domain name (.com, .org, .net, and so forth). If the length in (####) is greater than the url's length, ie ignores the comment and loads the document in the Local Machine zone.
• The comment must contain the document's url immediately following the string length
• The comment must appear in the first 2,048 bytes of the document within the markup

Below is a valid motw comment:

<!-- saved from url=(0023)http://www.contoso.com/ -->

For situations where the domain is not yet known, ie recognizes two generic comments. The about:internet comment specifies the Internet zone and is formatted like so:

<!-- saved from url=(0014)about:internet -->

The http://localhost comment specifies the Local intranet zone and is formatted like so:

<!-- saved from url=(0016)http://localhost -->

motw (Mark of the Web)

motw is a proprietary html comment to be included within a document's markup; motw is then utilized by ie and referenced to determine a user's security zone in which it should render the document.

What is Mark of the Web?

Trident Rendering Engine

Windows Internet Explorer Developer Documentation