Wednesday, December 19, 2012

Appropriate Browsers in Sharepoint. And Apples.

There are none.

Oh, kidding. KIDDING. Not kidding. Kidding. The only browser you can use with Sharepoint, any Sharepoint at all, is Internet Explorer 7+.

If you do not have IE 7+, your browser likely does not support the Active X. The Active X is necessary for batch document management, so you need it. Also, random bits of Sharepoint break when exposed to other browsers. Do not support anything that is not IE 7+. I have no better advice for you, because everywhere will tell you oh, Sharepoint is great on this or that or that other thing.

Sharepoint requires software that is not supported by non-Microsoft companies. This is entirely fair, and good business for them, but your response to anyone calling you up to say X link is broken or Y thing won't load in Chrome is to put down your phone, breathe calmly into your paper bag, take two Xanax and reply that you can't support Sharepoint in a non-MS environment.

This is going to be a problem, because half your company now runs Apple computers. The other half uses only Chrome, for any reason.

Apple Fix
The solution to this is one of two things. The first is, as mentioned, Boot Camp. Boot Camp, however, will force your team to work with Windows. For this they will despise you.

Parallels is your answer here (http://www.parallels.com/products/desktop/). It runs in-window and will let you load a proper* variant of IE, which will then allow everyone to work as normal with your toolchain. Your toolchain is already a hideous nest of interlinked technologies, one more can't hurt.
*hollow laugh.

Chrome Fix
This is only a problem because they have set it to their default browser, and now the links from Corporate Mailouts will open in Chrome and not IE, and break your shit.

Many* Sharepoint development books are insistent the software works properly cross-browser, which is a fat lie caused by MS <span>-naming every line of their code. They are incorrect. The solve for this is to get the person who has called you to set IE to be their default browser again, and to refuse to help with problems in browsers not from Microsoft.
*the one I read four pages of before laughing myself near-incontinent at its froth of lies

Froth of lies and icing sugar. I am off to make gingerbread houses threatened by bears, as is appropriate for the season.

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