Dare asks the question whether or not we should change the browser used by RSS Bandit. He was greeted by over 30 comments, mostly in favor of the switch. This is purely anecdotal, but I get the sense alot of people are upset by recent vulnerabilities in IE. I also get the sense that a lot of people feel that upstart browsers are toeing the line of innovation while IE has sat on its fat ass and done nothing lately.

Whether that’s true or not, as Dare points out, integrating another browser into RSS Bandit is a bit of work and could open a whole can of worms. I’d like to point out that there’s something you can do now with RSS Bandit as a stop-gap. It may not appease the die-hard Firefox or Gecko users, but hopefully it will help you feel more secure using RSS Bandit.

A little while ago I wrote up some documentation called Changing The Web Browser Security Settings which can be found on the RSS Bandit documentation site. There are two important features the document discusses. One is that you can have HTML links within RSS Bandit opened by an executable of your choice. This may not integrate with the nice Tabs within RSS Bandit, but at least you’re using the browser of your choice.

If you decide to stick with IE, I suggest configuring the Security, Restrictions options. You can deactivate ActiveX controls (the source of most vulnerabilities) and browse in relative safety. The documentation describes the risk of checking each option.

The Reading Pane (or “Item Detail Pane”) is not affected by these settings. It never allows any script or ActiveX controls. While we debate removing IE, you can read your feeds with more security. Happy RSS Reading.