Browsium Ion and Browser Authentication

Posted on October 30, 2018 by Kae

I set up a Browsium rule recently to render a SharePoint 2010 site in IE8 Standards mode. But initially Browsium Ion and browser authentication weren’t playing nicely together, and each time I launched a browser session with the Browsium rule enabled it returned a HTTP 401 and prompted for credentials.

Without the Browsium rule in place the site loaded fine but one of the Web Parts didn’t work. However when the Browsium rule was enabled, the Web Part worked fine but the user was prompted for authentication when the site initially loaded! It was as if Browsium wasn’t passing the Windows authenticated credentials during the request.

Browsium Ion and Browser Authentication

To resolve the authentication issue we can specify an ION profile flag under Advanced Profile Set which details what credentials are sent to the upstream server when automatically replying to an authentication challenge.

x-AutoAuth=(default)

Browsium Ion with HTTPS and Proxy Authentication

Posted on September 13, 2018 by Kae

I’ve been using Browsium Ion with HTTPS and Proxy Authentication recently. I was trying to force the default ‘Edge’ emulation mode to run in ‘IE8’ emulation mode over HTTPS instead.

HTTPS and Proxy Authentication

For HTTP URLs it worked fine. However with HTTPS URLS, when a new instance of iexplore.exe launched (presumably after being intercepted and spawned by Browsium Ion) the user was prompted for proxy authentication. Even upon entering correct credentials it still didn’t authenticate. After clicking ‘cancel’ dozens of times, the authentication prompt eventually went away and we saw the page rendering successfully in IE8 Emulation mode.

Specifying a Proxy Host and Port

To resolve the authentication issue we can specifically provide a proxy host and port (one that authenticates for the user) by adding the following to Advanced Profile Set for the profile in question:

x-overrideGateway=alkanehost:8080