"This page contains both secure and nonsecure items"

How annoying some Internet Explorer messages could get. I'm sure that you too, dear reader, have seen this security information prompt when browsing if you've used Internet Explorer for a bit. No, I'm not using Internet Explorer but I'm using Maxthon (which has an IE core) and almost everytime I visit a webpage that is secure (starts with https://) I get this prompt:

This page contains both secure and nonsecure items

Do you want to display the nonsecure items?

with the option to click Yes, No, or More Info. An example of such a page is the Google Analytics secure one, so everytime I log in to see statistics I have to click on the damn Yes button to continue. Until now I thought that you cannot disable/remove this annoying prompt, mainly because I was relying on a Microsoft article that said "This behavior is by design. You cannot disable this error message." I know that the KB article in cause is retired, but still an update pointing to a solution would have been excellent.

So I dug around and found that you can disable the "This page contains both secure and nonsecure items" message, with a simple selection. Below you can find how to remove this.

How to remove the "This page contains both secure and nonsecure items" window in Internet Explorer 7, 6 (and probably previous versions):

1. Open Internet Explorer, go to Tools, Internet Options, click on the Security tab
2. By default Internet is selected in the Select a zone window, so click on the Custom Level button
3. A new window will pop-up and you'll have to scroll through those options (probably around the middle of the window) and hunt for an option called "Display mixed content" in the Miscellaneous section
4. By default Prompt is selected, so change it from Prompt to Enable and click OK
5. You'll get another "Are you sure there's no sugar" (or something similar ;) ) message that you'll have to click Yes on to, and after that click another time OK. That's it, restart the browser and you shouldn't get that prompt anymore. A small visual guide is in the image below

 

How to remove the "This page contains both secure and nonsecure items" window in Maxthon 1 or 2:

1. This is pretty much the same as in Internet Explorer, so go to Tools->Internet Options (not Maxthon Setup center) the Security tab
2. By default Internet is selected in the Select a zone window, so click on the Custom Level button
3. A new window will pop-up and you'll have to scroll through those options (probably around the middle of the window) and hunt for an option called "Display mixed content" in the Miscellaneous section
4. By default Prompt is selected, so change it from Prompt to Enable and click OK until all the windows are closed

How do you remove this message in Firefox or Opera or Google Chrome? Well, as far as I know these browsers are smart enough to not show this prompt, so you're not having to change anything. If you wonder what the "This page contains both secure and nonsecure items" message actually tells you, it's that in the page you are visiting, at least one element comes from a non-https address. So if someone from Google Analytics forgot to put a small icon on a secure section, then millions of Internet Explorer users will get this prompt. Unless they follow this tutorial.