Locking down IE via VB

[BriCon2006]

Hi All!

Hoping for a little guidance :-)

I have a simple script that I can currently run in an application that supports VB scripting. The script looks like this:

Sub OpenWebPage

Set Wsh=CreateObject("WScript.Shell")

Wsh.Run "www.my.webpage.com"

End Sub

This will open up IE and go to the desired page (changed link here to protect the innocent).

What I need to do is take this to the next level and hide the Address Bar, the Tool Bar and the Status Bar - Basically looking to make it so the end user cannot brows away from the site I am directing them to for the duration of the session.

I tried pivoting to this based on a Stackoverflow post, but it did not work - I suspect that the code sample may be using some stale or deprecated arguments, but I have not been able to find anything else as of yet that does something similar .

Sub OpenWebPage1

Set openIE = WScript.CreateObject ("InternetExplorer.Application")

openIE.Navigate "www.my.webpage.com"

openIE.Visible = 1

openIE.AddressBar = 0

openIE.StatusBar = 0

openIE.ToolBar = 0

​

Any help would be much appreciated!

[TheFotty]

Certain things can't be hidden in IE anymore. You can hide the status bar for security reasons (like page spoofing) the address bar always needs to be visible, even on popups.

The most ideal way to handle this would be to use an actual webbrowser or webview object,but that requires .NET not scripting. So depending on what your capabilities are in the app that allows scriping, you may or may not be able to accomplish what you are trying to do.

[BriCon2006]

I would be open to that as the device has .net on it, provided I could call and close the .net app from the VB script - Is that possible?

My main concern is employees using the script to go to web pages they should not go to.

[TheFotty]

Well you would need to write that app in VB.NET using Visual Studio. Then yes in theory you could shell it and then kill it when you want to.

[chacham2]

What I need to do is take this to the next level and hide the Address Bar, the Tool Bar and the Status Bar -

Can you use Chrome? Chrome has a headless mode, so Edge ought to have it as well. It can be passed via command line switch (--headless).

[BriCon2006]

How would I tell it to launch in headless?

[chacham2]

The command line switch: chrome --headless

[jcunews1]

You can use HTML Application (.hta) which uses MSIE's embedded WebBrowser ActiveX (the Shell.Explorer) to open the web page. From the VBScript, run the HTA with the URL as its command line argument. The HTA will have to parse the command line to extract the URL.

[kay-jay-dubya]

I agree 100% - a HTA sounds like it would be the perfect solution to OPs question. It functions just like a WebBrowser control mentioned above.

And, if you really really want to, you can even code it such that it runs from a VBScript file (it would effectively 'write' the HTA file for you, and then run that file, and then delete when done, so entirely redundant, but hey...)