Question Not forcing HTTPS

[IBMJunkman]

Did not know where to post this but since I am on Windows. 😊

A page on my HTTPS site has a link to a site that does not use HTTPS. The link on my site is coded HTTP. It seems browsers currently force a HTTPS connection. Something on the linked site causes a page not found when HTTPS connection is attempted. I can get it to work if I force Firefox to not use HTTPS.

Is there any way I could code the link to tell a browser not to force HTTPS?

 

[mikeymikec]

I doubt it's possible since it's a stupid 'feature' to force https even when the user has specified http in the address bar.

I encountered it recently when trying to manually configure a Netgear wireless repeater unit and even when I managed to convince Firefox to go to the http site once, as soon as I clicked on a link it went to https and promptly failed to connect.

What happens if you craft the link as http://website.here:80/blahblahblah ?

 

[IBMJunkman]

I tried it. Does not seem to help

The link is http://www.columbia.edu/cu/computinghistory/norc.html
In browsers that had not been forced to HTTPS the following also failed.

IBM NORC

IBM Naval Ordnance Research Calculator 1954

www.columbia.edu

 

[mikeymikec]

Both links work fine for me (Firefox or Chromium, Linux).

 

[IBMJunkman]

From my iPad Safari, Chrome, Firefox, AdBlock browser, DuckDuckGo, Opera Mini, Photon and Ghostery all fail with this:

Object not found!​

The requested URL was not found on this server. If you entered the URL manually please check your spelling and try again.

If you think this is a server error, please contact the webmaster.

Error 404​

www.columbia.edu
Fri Apr 26 16:03:09 2024
Apache

 

[mikeymikec]

Firefox / win11 was fine, Edge threw a 404 then when I adjusted the URL it loaded it fine, then proceeded to load either URL fine even after restarting Edge.

Reset Edge, loaded each URL, 404.

 

[lantis3]

Firefox works if you turn off HTTPS-Only Mode in Security & Privacy settings. Chrome just plain doesn't work no matter what settings you set.

What's interesting is that if you visit www.columbia.edu then it's a secure connection, but www.columbia.edu/cu/computinghistory/norc.html is not.

But actually columbia.edu has a wildcard certificate.

 

[lantis3]

So if you visit http://www.columbia.edu/cu/computinghistory/index.html

It says

Status of this siteAs of 8 May 2024, this site will be accessible via HTTPS as well as HTTP. Until then it is inaccessible from browsers such as Chrome that that allow only HTTPS access, and report "page not found" for existing pages that are available only via HTTP, such as this one.

 

[IBMJunkman]

So if you visit http://www.columbia.edu/cu/computinghistory/index.html

It says

Status of this siteAs of 8 May 2024, this site will be accessible via HTTPS as well as HTTP. Until then it is inaccessible from browsers such as Chrome that that allow only HTTPS access, and report "page not found" for existing pages that are available only via HTTP, such as this one.

The maintainer of the website and myself opened support tickets with the support group. Good to see they plan to fix it.

Now I can remove the disclaimer I put on my site explaining the errors.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Browsers are getting more and more aggressive with forcing HTTPS now, which is a bit ridiculous, not everything needs to be https, especially if no data is involved or stuff that's on a 10.x.x.x subnet. The form warnings are really annoying because the warning blocks the next field and you have to click somewhere else to get to the next field. Another thing I noticed is if you try to link to an image from a non https site now days browsers will give all sorts of warnings or even block it entirely.

Not much can be done unfortunately if you don't control the sites that are non HTTPS.

 

[lantis3]

Chrome 114 seems to be the last version that will not force https, just tested the portable version here

https://sourceforge.net/projects/portableapps/files/Google%20Chrome%20Portable/

https://sourceforge.net/projects/portableapps/files/Google%20Chrome%20Portable/GoogleChromePortable64_114.0.5735.199_online.paf.exe/download

The above version loads that page properly.