Office Communicator web access shows blank page

[Daniele Besana (WP-OK)]

Binary package hint: firefox-3.0

The home page for the Microsoft Office Communicator web access 2007 is not working with Firefox/3.0b3.
Instead of the login screen I've a blank page.

I could not find a public server with this page, but I can upload the saved .htm page I have.

From my analysis:
- the <form> tag has "style="display: none;" which should hide the content if I'm correct
- no error on console
- no log on JsConsole

I don't know how to troubleshoot further this annoying bug, the web interface is the only way for a Linux user to access the company Office Communicator :-(

Thanks
--
Daniele Besana

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: i386
Date: Thu Feb 21 00:34:29 2008
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 8.04
NonfreeKernelModules: vmnet vmmon
Package: firefox 3.0~b3+nobinonly-0ubuntu2
PackageArchitecture: all
SourcePackage: firefox-3.0
Uname: Linux besa 2.6.24-8-generic #1 SMP Thu Feb 14 20:40:45 UTC 2008 i686 GNU/Linux

[Daniele Besana (WP-OK) (daniele-wpok)]

Attached file test.htm is the saved .htm of the web page having problem.
CSS and JS are not included, but you can see the strange style="display: none; in the <form> tag.

[Daniele Besana (WP-OK) (daniele-wpok)]

If someone has access to a Microsoft Office Communicator web access can confirm this behavior?
I tried with a different profile - same result.

Thanks

[Daniele Besana (WP-OK) (daniele-wpok)]

More infos:
with Firefox-2 is working fine.

Loading the real page (not the saved .htm) the jsconsole gives error:
Error: redeclaration of const Error
Source File: https://[REMOVED]/cwa/client/1.0.1355.0000/JScript/LogonOverAll.js
Line: 2

I attached the file LogonOverAll.js with the script giving error.

Thanks!
--
Daniele Besana

[Matthew Tighe (tighem)]

I can confirm it. Office communicator will not display under Firefox 3.0 but displays just fine under 2.0. I've actually installed swiftweasel 2.x to display. The epiphany browser in Hardy also will not display it, but the one under Gutsy displayed it just fine.

[Matthew Tighe (tighem)]

THis is now working for me under Firefox Beta 4

[Daniele Besana (WP-OK) (daniele-wpok)]

Confirmed! it works well with beta 4.
Thi can be killed.

Thanks

[Shannon VanWagner (shannon-vanwagner)]

I'm using Firefox/3.0.1 and the communicator sub-window loads and shows my contacts but neither double-clicking the contact nor right-clicking the contact, then "Send an Instant Message" does anything. Apparently what it should do is create yet another child window with the chat dialog for the contact where you can type something in and see messages coming back.

I tried this both on Firefox/3.0.1 on Ubuntu Linux 8.04 and even on WinXP Firefox/3.0.1 and it doesn't work in either place. I've used the "Report broken site" link in Firefox/3.0.1 but since my OCWA is an internal server, I'm not sure how much information they received from my report.

I also tried epiphany web browser - same behavior as described above.

What works for me is the SeaMonkey 1.1.9 Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8.1.13) Gecko/20080313 SeaMonkey/1.1.9 (Ubuntu-1.1.9+nobinonly-0ubuntu1), as it allows the proper child windows to launch and I can chat with my Windows bound buddies.

Please let me know if you need more details.

Regards,

Shannon VanWagner
http://healthysystem.blogspot.com
http://digg.com/users/bicep

[Daniele Besana (WP-OK) (daniele-wpok)]

Same here, how can we help to have this fixed?

Thanks
--
Daniele

[Daniele Besana (WP-OK) (daniele-wpok)]

Shannon,
we need to open a separate bug here, because the original problem reported in this bug has been fixed already and was different.
Cheers
--
Daniele

[Daniele Besana (WP-OK) (daniele-wpok)]

This has already been reported in 236030

[Shannon VanWagner (shannon-vanwagner)]

Something I've found is that the Communicator Web Access works if the "user agent" is switched to Win/IE7. Although the switch has to be performed only in the child popup window(the one that has the contacts), and to do this you have to "customize" the toolbar of the child window to have the user-agent switcher icon on it. If you change the user agent at the login window, you will not be able to launch the popup window (this is very screwy eh?).

if you want to load the Firefox "User Agent Switcher" plugin, get it here:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/59

So although this will make the communicator work in Firefox 3.0, I don't use this method myself because I don't want to cloak the fact that I am using GNU/Linux and Firefox. This reason is entirely political on my part because I want to show as many webservers out there as possible that I am using GNU/Linux and Firefox to surf the web.

After examining the "overall.js" javascript file that appears to control the Office communicator website experience, it seems there is a function there that checks for a win/IE platform(as well as other browsers and mac), and I would suspect that since Firefox 3 does not validate as a "known" browser to the javascript, it is breaking the functionality of the program in Firefox 3. This is just silly because as soon as I switch the "user agent" to win/IE7, the program works just fine in FIrefox 3.

Shannon VanWagner
http://healthysystem.blogspot.com

Get your cool GNU/Linux shirt here:
http://free.spreadshirt.com

[Shannon VanWagner (shannon-vanwagner)]

Thanks for pointing out 236030 Daniele Besana!
I'll put any future comments that I come up with on that bug.

B/R
Shannon VanWagner
http://healthysystem.blogspot.com

Get your cool GNU/Linux shirt here:
http://free.spreadshirt.com

[Shannon VanWagner (shannon-vanwagner)]

Here is the link to Daniele's original bug:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/firefox-3.0/+bug/236030