Now let's dig in to group policy preferences, internet settings and see how we can use this to configure
i.e..
So the first thing to note about it is I think I showed you this in the UI, but you can configure different
browser versions using these group policy preferences, internet settings, options.
If you right click on the node and say new, you'll see all of the different browser versions that are
configured or that are configurable using group policy preferences.
Again, note that this is only per user, so you can only configure this and targeted at user objects
in AD.
Now what you're seeing in this screenshot reflects what's available on Windows Server 2012 or two and
or Windows 8.1.
And what's a little bit misleading is that even though the last option says Internet Explorer ten only,
it actually will support configuring Internet Explorer ten and 11.
So similar to the one before it, eight and nine.
You can configure i.e. ten and 11 using this last option.
And so you can support multiple browser versions using the options that I showed here within a particular
GPO.
So you can have configuration settings for i.e. five and six, i7 eight and nine and i.e. ten all in
the same GPO and group policy preference is smart enough to target only those machines that have the
appropriate browser version installed for those settings.
So that's kind of a handy thing to be able to do now with the group policy preferences UI.
Once they dig into it, you'll see that it looks a lot like the Tools Internet Options menu selections
that you see in when you're in IEEE.
So the UI for configuring group policy preferences is almost identical to the browser that you see the
option that you see in the browser when you configure it.
Now, each option that you see that's underlined for colored has and is individually sellable.
So you could click that delete browser history on exit and that will set that option within the group
policy preferences.
So there's obviously ways to tell it which settings you want to configure and which you don't read.
The dotted red line that you see under the homepage that indicates that the setting is disabled.
That means that group policy preferences won't configure this on the client when the user processes
this policy.
Now if it's green, like the delete browsing history on exit option, well that means that it will configure
it that it's enabled.
And you can actually control these green or red toggles either on preceding basis or on an entire tab,
as you see it here in the UI.
So Microsoft has made these kind of secret hotkeys available.
F5, f6, f7 and f8.
And they can be used to configure or turn off or on or disable or enable each of these options.
And these these hotkeys, these f f keys are actually universal to all group policy preferences, not
just the internet settings area.
This works across all the different areas, so you can either enable all or disable all, or enable
or disable specific ones, or this particular page or a particular setting using these hotkeys, these
f keys.
So it's really kind of a powerful capability.
The thing to keep in mind here is, let's say, for example, you put a home page entry in and left
the line as a red underline.
Well, it's simply going to be ignored by the user that processes this policy because it's set to essentially
disable.
So some of the common things that you can do with preferences, you can set the home page, you can
set security levels for zones.
So Internet zone, intranet zone, trusted sites, zone or local zone, you can set the security levels
that the browser configures for each of those zones using preferences.
Now, you can't do what's called site to zone assignments, which means you can't add particular domain
names that should be placed into particular zones.
So you can't say that, for example, w ww dot microsoft.com should always be put in the trusted site
zone and therefore have a different level of security.
You can do that admin templates, but it's not supported with TP preferences.
You can do things like controlling the pop up blockers behavior and the sites that get exceptions to
the pop up blockers.
So you can add a web domain that does not respect the pop up blocker if you choose to do so.
And you can control which versions of SSL and TLC are supported in the browser.
So you can configure that through preferences.
And most importantly, you can set proxy configuration.
So you can set which the address of the proxy server for the browser or any other options related to
proxy exceptions to the proxy and port specific proxy configurations if needed.
You can control i.e. history and cache behavior.
So how long history is kept or it's kept whether the cache is cleared on browser exit.
Those kind of options are all configurable in preferences.