Posted on November 4th, 2011%
In a recent deployment of Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011, users were accessing the application via the server’s host name, e.g. https://crmserver01.company.com. That is rather unfriendly, so we created a new DNS record for crm.company.com — giving users the easier-to-remember https://crm.company.com (and removing a dependency on a server name).
Unfortunately, authenticating to https://crm.company.com didn’t work for Internet Explorer users. IE would prompt for the credentials, but they were never accepted. Authentication did work for other browsers, and all browsers — including IE — were able to authenticate to https://crmserver01.company.com without issue.
This didn’t make sense. The domain name of the server shouldn’t matter (both were in IE’s Local Intranet Zone), nor should the browser version. But the different experience between browsers was all I had to go on, so I did some (network) sniffing.
Using Fiddler2 to monitor the network traffic created by web browsers, I opened Firefox and connected to http://crm.company.com (no SSL, so it’s easier to monitor network traffic). Firefox . . .
→ Read More: Troubleshooting Windows Authentication in IIS
Posted on March 2nd, 2010%
In the news this morning, I stumbled across an article, EU: 100 million Microsoft users to choose browser. Reading this, there were a few instances of questionable logic.
The first instance (emphasis added):
Microsoft is starting this month to send updates to Windows computers in Europe so that when computer users log on, they will see a pop-up screen asking them to pick one or more of 12 free Web browsers to download and install, including Microsoft.
Microsoft is allowing users to choose one of more than 12 free web browsers, because the EU didn’t like Microsoft bundling its own free web browser into Windows. Call me strange, but punishing a company to give something away for free because it blocks out other companies from giving their own products away for free strikes me as odd.
The second instance (emphasis added):
The EU’s executive commission said giving consumers the chance to try an alternative to Microsoft’s Internet Explorer browser that comes with the widely used . . .
→ Read More: Forcing users to choose a browser other than Internet Explorer doesn’t help them
Posted on January 2nd, 2009%
Google has taken the torch in the anti-IE6 crusade, as reported on Slashdot.
“Google is now urging Gmail users to drop Internet Explorer 6 (IE6) in favor of Firefox or Chrome. Google recently removed Firefox from the Google Pack bundle, replaced it with Chrome, then added a direct download link for Chrome on Google and YouTube. Google’s decision to list IE6 as an unsupported Gmail browser does not affect just consumers: Tens of thousands of small- and mid-sized businesses that run Google Apps hosted services may dump IE6 as well. What’s especially interesting is the fact that Mozilla is picking up two out of three browser users that Microsoft surrenders.”
All I can say is, “It’s about time!” Internet Explorer 6 was first released on August 27, 2001 – over seven years ago. Upgrades are free (in the forms of IE7+, Firefox, Safari, Chrome, etc.) and can . . .
→ Read More: Google starts the “anti-IE6 crusade”. Let’s hope it works
Posted on November 4th, 2008%
While using Google GMail today, I noticed that they put a blue highlighting around the text input boxes when they have input focus. It’s a nice touch that makes it just a bit easier for users to identify which field their typing in. (Safari users, of course, get this on all web sites out of the box.)
Getting this to work on your web site is a simple matter of applying some CSS styles. The trick is to give your normal inputs fields a 1px border and a 1px margin; then, when they have focus, give them a 2px border (with a different color if you so choose) and no margin. This will ensure the dimensions of the element don’t change when the border width changes.
The following CSS provides an example of styling text boxes (both text and password inputs, and multi-line text boxes) and select lists (single and multi-line) with an alternate outline when holding the input focus.
input[type=text], input[type=password], textarea, select {
border-top: solid 1px #8e8e8e;
border-right: solid 1px #d1d1d1;
border-left: solid 1px #d1d1d1;
border-bottom: solid 1px #e4e4e4;
margin: 1px;
padding: 2px;
}
input[type=text]:focus, input[type=password]:focus, textarea:focus, select:focus {
border-color: #4488cc;
border-style: solid;
border-width: 2px;
margin: 0;
}
Like many good web tricks, this’ll look great in Firefox but won’t do anything in Internet Explorer. That’s because IE (through version 7) doesn’t support attribute selectors (as in [type=text]) or the :focus selector. To get things to work in IE, we need to rely on a little more CSS and some JavaScript.
. . . → Read More: Outlining textbox input fields (and getting it to work in IE)
