Jason Bartholme’s SEO Blog

I have been developing our company’s intranet for the last month. Everything was running smooth until I tried to open local files through Firefox. These files were not necessarily web pages, but .pdfs, Excel spreadsheets, PowerPoint presentations, and other miscellaneous files that employees needed for time off requests, expense reports, etc.

I would have been easier if all the files were on the same server and updated for a common directory. No such luck. I had to use the file: protocol to reference the location of these files. Internet Explorer was able to open everything fine. The problem was with Firefox.

Here is the explanation of why local file may not open in Firefox:

For security purposes, Firefox and Mozilla Suite block links to local files (and directories) from remote files. This includes linking to files on your hard drive, on mapped network drives, and accessible via UNC paths. This prevents a number of unpleasant possibilities, including:

• Allowing sites to detect your operating system by checking default installation paths
• Allowing sites to exploit system vulnerabilities (e.g., C:\con\con in Windows 95/98)
• Allowing sites to detect browser preferences or read sensitive data

mozillazine.org

The remedy was to alter the user.js file to “trust” the web site. This seemed to complicated I figured there had to be a better solution.

Another site mentioned altering an attribute on Firefox’s about:config area. I tried that and nothing would open the documents. Turns out that tweak was outdated as of version 1.5.

After a fair amount of searching, I found a solution. There is a Firefox add-on called IE Tabs. This little add-on allows your Firefox browser to behave like IE and manually “trust” a site. Here is how I was able to view the local files across our servers:

1. Install IE Tabs
2. Restart Firefox
3. Tools > IE Tab Options
4. Click Site Filter, provide your intranet’s URL, click Add, OK
5. Left-click the Firefox icon in the status bar to change it to IE

It seems that if you are in the Firefox rendering mode, then click to a page where you have previously rendered in IE, it will switch automatically. We are going to install this solution and see how it works.