Ever since Microsoft gave me one of their
fingerprint readers, I have never used it for anything more than logging on and off on my computer (which is quite convenient), even though it can be used for authentication on websites, programs etc. Why? Because the software doesn't work with Firefox. Ok I thought, Microsoft is the big aggressive monster that consumes everything in its path, and Firefox is an obstacle. After all, I got it for free anyway - I'd be returning it if I had bought it though as Firefox is probably the most used app on my computer. Interesting, it didn't even work with MSN Messenger/Windows Live Messenger, which I thought was odd.
Just recently however, to coincide with the release of Windows Vista, Microsoft released
version 2.0 of the fingerprinting software which included Vista support. They also made an effort to make sure Mozilla Firefox worked well with Windows Vista way before this, to the point where they invited the Firefox developers to their campus to work on issues.
Guess what - the fingerprinting software
still doesn't work with Firefox 2.0. It works perfectly fine with IE7 (which is a great leap from IE6 - and by the way, please upgrade if you're using IE6, for one, my site will look much much better
) but again refuses to see the Firefox window as a login screen.
Where was the hardware division when the Firefox team visited? Or was it really all just a show...
What makes it worse is that apparently before Microsoft re-branded the fingerprint reader from
DigitalPersona, the software actually worked with Firefox!
There is a workaround however - the
FingerFox extension, which detects the login forms on websites and re-exposes them in a seperate window so the fingerprint reader's software can work with it. This is ridiculous however - great initiative and solution shown by the extension developer - but it's still clunky and nowhere near as smooth as the IE7 implementation. As the second most popular browser out there, its a shame that the hardware division didn't see it as imperative that their devices worked with it - maybe Microsoft hasn't changed that much after all...