A while back I came across this entry which surprised me: Firefox supports automatic NTLM authentication.

Now, you may be thinking, when is this useful?

  • Many SharePoint sites (note: not all)
  • Other ASP.NET sites that use NTLM authentication
  • IF YOU ARE TIRED OF SEEING THIS LITTLE GUY (image below):

Firefox authentication required dialog

 

A visual walkthrough 

Type about:config in the Firefox address bar

 

 

Firefox will display the about:config page

 

 

Type in ntlm in the filter to quickly hone in on your target property

 

 

double-click on network.automatic-ntlm-auth.trusted-uris

 

 

type in a comma-separated list of trusted domains

 

Please note that the trusted-uris list does not include any protocol prefix, i.e. you don't type http:// anywhere. Please also note that each site is separated by commas with no space in between.

Why Firefox for SharePoint development

This brings many of us to the question: but Peter, why do you bother with Firefox in the first place? I have two major reasons:

  1. Web Developer Toolbar
  2. Firebug

These two Firefox addins help immensely with various web design tasks (e.g. CSS detection/changing on the fly/tracing to source; resizing the browser window to emulate a smaller monitor; a pixel ruler; etc!). Internet Explorer has no comparable equivalent to many of the features these two addins provide. The bottom line is I absolutely need these Firefox-only addins.

Internet Explorer's place

By default I use Internet Explorer for SharePoint, only switching to Firefox when I need to use one of the tools mentioned above.

This post shouldn't be interpreted as "Peter uses Firefox all the time for SharePoint development," because I don't.