Internet Explorer pictures not displayed – how do I bypass security so that they are?

Well, to begin with pictures shouldn’t be getting blocked
based on security settings. You can turn pictures off entirely, of
course, but that’s a speed-up intended for slow connections.

Let’s double check that setting, consider a couple of other issues
that might be causing this problem, and then also see about what it
means in IE7’s security settings to, uh … ignore … the
consequences.

The ability to display pictures should be turned on by default, but
IE7 still includes the option to turn it off. This is a browser-wide
setting, so it’ll effect every website you visit.

In IE7 click on Tools, Internet
Options and then click on the Advanced tab.
In the Settings list, scroll down until in the
Multimedia section you see Show
Pictures:

Simply make sure that’s checked, or not, as you see fit.

•

Sometimes files in IE’s cache can interfere with new files and pictures.
The quickest approach to eliminate this as a problem is to clear the cache.

Click on Tools, Internet
Options and then in the General tab,
in the Browsing history section click on the Delete… button:

In the Temporary Internet Files section click on the Delete Files…
button and then click on Yes in response to the confirmation request.

•

Another possibility is that your security software is somehow
interfering with your web page displays. Unfortunately there’s no way
for me to confirm that this is the case, because different security
packages all operate differently and have different levels of what I’ll
just call “intrusion” into your browsing experience.

If you’re running a software firewall or some other kind of internet
security suite, I would take a few moments to review whether or not
that package is involved in protecting you from what your browser might
display, and in turn, how to go about turning that off.

•

Since you mention these are technical sites, I’m wondering if these
aren’t plain old images at all, but rather some kind of interactive,
Javascript or other technology based image displaying utilities. If you
can scroll around the images, zoom, pan, and whatever else, it’s likely
that this is the case.

This is also a case where “damn the consequences” might be an
appropriate solution.

Within reason, of course.

In short, we’re going to add the site you’re having trouble with to
Internet Explorer’s list of “Trusted Sites”. That should remove most of
the restrictions that IE might be placing on that site’s content.

Once again in Tools, Internet
Options, this time click the Security tab,
and then click on the Trusted Sites zone icon:

To add a site to the list of trusted sites, click on the
Sites button:

Enter the URL of the site that you’re having issues with (you can
see I’ve typed in “http://ask-leo.com” here as an example). You also
may need to un-check “Require server verification
(https:) for all sites in this zone” if the URL does not begin with
https.

Click on Add, and then click on
Close. This will bring you back to the Security Tab
displayed above. You may want to drop the security level of
this zone from Medium to Low:

Since only sites you trust will be placed into this zone, it’s
reasonable to drop the restrictions placed on them. As it states
“Appropriate for sites that you absolutely trust”.

And if you don’t absolutely trust? Well, that’s the “damn
the consequences” part of it all.