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I have limited functionality using sharepoint with firefox

  • 2 replies
  • 86 have this problem
  • 7 views
  • Last reply by mulad

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There are certain views in sharepoint that are only accessible when using activex controls. Firefox is my only browser, which means I have limited functionality attempting to make new pages or visit pages in certain views.

This happened

Every time Firefox opened

== I switched from IE to Firefox

There are certain views in sharepoint that are only accessible when using activex controls. Firefox is my only browser, which means I have limited functionality attempting to make new pages or visit pages in certain views. == This happened == Every time Firefox opened == I switched from IE to Firefox

All Replies (2)

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Firefox doesn't do ActiveX, so you're going to have to use IE on that website to access those features.

https://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/ActiveX

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Sharepoint is not a proper cross-platform system. I understand that Sharepoint 2010 is better at talking to Firefox and other non-IE browsers than Sharepoint 2007 and earlier, but it still has problems. Ironically, even some IE users have trouble due to the ActiveX requirements.

I'm confident that workarounds could be implemented with Greasemonkey and other tools to address this on the browser side, but there don't seem to be any that work in a completely compatible way. There are certainly dozens of HTML editors which work nicely in Firefox which could get linked in either through a client-side add-on or by modifying behavior on the server.

At least two HTML editors are built into plugins which allow you to right-click on a textarea and edit the contents in a more WYSIWYG manner. I tried the Write Area and Xinha addons, and they both pop up a new HTML window for editing with just a right-click. Unfortunately, Sharepoint has a lot of mucky CSS which causes the pristine HTML coming out of those editors to be rendered in an ugly way. We need a rich text editor that can inherit all of the CSS that Sharepoint serves up yet still work in a nice way.

There are some sites which describe how to serve up FCKeditor, TinyMCE, and other rich text editors from the server side. Here are a few for TinyMCE:

http://www.andypemberton.com/captech/integrating-tinymce-with-sharepoint-moss-2007/ http://www.notesfor.net/post/Enhance-SharePoint-rich-text-field.aspx

Of course, the text editor is just one of many things that are screwy about Sharepoint. Someone ought to put together a whole project to gather together the various bits needed to make Sharepoint better for cross-platform users.

There is at least one company which provides commercial Sharepoint server-side add-ons to make a variety of user interface improvements for both IE and non-IE browsers:

http://www.telerik.com/products/sharepoint.aspx

I'd rather see companies use something other than Sharepoint for internal wiki-ish sites. Despite the marketing, many Sharepoint sites do little more than share Word and Excel documents. There are many good alternative systems which are much better at promoting collaboration.

Modified by mulad