Fine-Tuning Helpdesk for Firefox
The number of people using Firefox is growing fast*, and rightly so, as it is a very capable browser.
Out of the box, .NET 1.1 does not support Firefox and many of the other more modern browsers, so they are treated as downlevel browsers.
The Helpdesk application has been written primarily for IE, but you can improve the experience slightly for Helpdesk users using Firefox by editing the web.config file and including a <browsercaps> section under system.web. I personally used the code available for download at slingfive.com
The real improvement I noticed is that the input text areas are now rendered with the correct width.
Editors Note: while Firefox may work for Helpdesk, it is not an officially supported browser as of yet.
* During July 2006, 31.44% of visitors to the Juice were viewing the site through a Firefox browser.
Comment to the editor
I am not proposing the use of Firefox here as a platform for the workers. I am addressing issues that end-users may have connecting to the HD in order to open tickets. It is a minor change to the .NET framework which enables the IIS server to recognize modern browsers such as Konquerer, Opera 7 and Firefox as uplevel browsers. After all, not all end users of the Helpdesk are on Windows platforms.
Thanks John
Those of us watching over the Juicedesk are big fans of Firefox.
We were just glad someone gave us an opportunity to point out that 1/3 of our Juice readers use this fine browser.
Software developers: hint, hint.
As a software developer ...
One of my per projects is to do exactly that. I started with the winuser console. Check this out ... Altiris Helpdesk Forum
I Agree, Thanks John-
This is long overdue and I'm glad John stepped up to the plate. Many, many of us are Firefox fans and would love the opportunity to not have to switch back and forth between browsers. :)
The Best of Both Worlds
I really like Firefox, but I like the functionality that IE provides when it comes to HelpDesk. So, I made a compromise. I installed the IE Tab Add-on in Firefox. So, that means you can run a tab with the IE rendering engine. You can even make it so when you navigate to your helpdesk web site in Firefox, it will switch to the IE engine. It works pretty well for us.
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