Why is Firefox the only browser that works?

[toffa813]

I recently arrived at college and when you join the wifi network (and through ethernet) you have to register your computer. I did this at orientation and everything worked fine. Once I got here I had to reregister (maybe they reset something in the system, so I don't think its a big deal but youre supposed to only have to register every 12 months). I believe what happened is I opened Safari and I registered over Wifi and ethernet. And then nothing would load while I was on wifi, but Skype would work (but I've noticed that the Pandora One app won't load, but I'm not going to worry about that, at least for now. I can use the website).

So after like an hour chatting with tech support, resetting Safari, restarting, trying Chrome, I go in to the library where tech support is. The guy walks me through some more stuff and is stumped. Some other tech guy says test Firefox, even though I've tried Chrome. And lo and behold, it worked. And they decided that was fixed enough and at the time I did too. (And ultimately as long as there's a browser that works I'm good)

Oh, and it gets weirder. Since I don't use firefox, I hadn't updated it until yesterday. And I trashed the old version first, and downloaded the new one and that didn't work. So I trashed that and took the old version out and that's what I'm using now. (Would it work if I updated this instead of trashing it first?)

So any other suggestions on getting Safari to work? I definitely prefer it.

 

[Makosuke]

Sounds an awful lot like the registration system is just screwed up, and Webkit (core of Safari and Chrome) doesn't like whatever's wrong with the system. Firefox, perhaps, fixed a bug or changed some outdated behavior between the version that worked and the latest version, which would explain why it stopped working as well.

There are two possibilities that you could try easily enough:

1) If it's the more-effective popup blocking behavior of Safari/Chrome/new FF that is causing the issue, it might work fine if you try disabling popup blocking. This is of course assuming you didn't already try that during troubleshooting, which you probably did. I've seen issues like this with badly-coded webapps that try to open new windows.

2) If it's a broken browser-sniffing script causing the issue, using the Safari Develop menu to change the User Agent to either an older version of Firefox (the one that worked), or even IE on Windows, might cause it to work. If you don't know how to do this you can find instructions all over this site or Google them up from elsewhere.


Otherwise probably just a badly-constructed system that hasn't been tested with newer browsers--I've seen way too many of those.

 

[toffa813]

Ok I tried both of those, and neither one worked. My roommate and neighbor both run Safari just fine. I don't know about my roommate, but my neighbor is running the same version of Safari as me (5.0.1) and has almost the same computer (2.53 i5).

And Cisco or some other company like that rated us in the top 100 wireless campuses or something like that so our system should be pretty good. I don't get it.

Why do I always get stuck with pieces of tech that always fail in some way or another?

 

[sherylh96]

Ah, the IU wireless. I'm a Kelley MBA student through IUPUI, and I always have problems with the wifi there. One of my group members who has always had his computer working on the wifi suddenly for no reason couldn't get on last night in class, but I could. It's fun.

 

[BobZune]

Possible Proxy issue?

Things to try:

1. On Firefox PREFERENCES, ADVANCED, NETWORK, SETTINGS, not how PROXY is configured.

2. Under Safari, PREFERENCES, ADVANCED, PROXIES (Change Settings), PROXIES tab, check what is set up (it probably picked up an automatic set up). [You can also get to the same place from SYSTEM PREFERENCES, NETWORK, ...)

In step (2), check your room mate's (or neighbor's) setup and set it up the same way on yours. [Or set it up using the same Proxy set up as Firefox is using that you noted in step 1.]

In either case, you may want to write down the settings before changing them.

Good luck!

 

[toffa813]

There were no proxies selected in Firefox so I unselected all of them in network settings and...
it works! Safari, my widgets, Pandora One app, and iTunes store all work. Thank you so much.