October 16, 2008

Locked Down

I've been here in Washington, D.C. since late Sunday for training, and I've been restricted in the systems I can use.

At the hotel, the wireless connection is unreliable at best and inaccessible at worst. At the training center, we're running on locked-down desktops running Windows Server 2003 Standard Edition and Internet Explorer 6 in high-security mode.

I wish I could say I was surprised at how much of the Web just doesn't work in this locked-down scenario, but I'm not.

AJAX is gone. Basic JavaScript is gone. Pop-ups (thankfully) are gone. Basic functionality (like ASP.NET hyperlink postbacks) can even be gone at times.

Sites that have the login prompt hidden by JavaScript (like Shacknews) are unusable. Functions that completely rely on JavaScript (like the directions functions over at MapQuest) fail.

It is definitely reminding me that when I am architecting our new system for release next year, I have to ensure that I have fallbacks in place for those poor unfortunate souls who are chained to neutered browsers.

1 comment:

Sarkie said...

On our new system, I'm trying to add JavaScript using JQuery on the load of the page, so normal functionality is "Open Google.com" added functionality is "Open Google.com in a nice light box". If the new stuff isn't there, they can still follow through!