Dealing With Those Pesky IE-Only Sites (IE Tab v2)

Last updated September 2017
(This is instructions for using IE Tab v2.  For IE Tab Plus and IE View, go here.)

Sadly, even in this day in age there are still a few IE-only sites I have to deal with.  However, we can use the IE Tab v2 extension to manage this problem.  It uses Internet Explorer to render pages in a tab that looks like any other Firefox tab.  It's transparent to the end user.  You just need to specify which sites it should be done for via my login script.

Important: These instructions require you to use the Firefox 52 ESR releases and also add this line to the login script:

"plugin.load_flash_only", false

This is because non-Flash plugins, which IE Tab uses to function, are no longer supported in the regular Firefox releases.  Also, all extensions not written in the newer WebExtension format will no longer work in Firefox 57 and later.  Firefox 52 ESR will get security updates until May 2018 so it's safe to use it until then.  If no WebExtension version of IE Tab is released by then, oh well.  For more information see The Death of Plugins.

Configuring IE Tab v2

You should add these lines to firefoxSettings in the login script:

var firefoxSettings = new Array(
   "extensions.ietab2.filter", true,
   "extensions.ietab2.compatMode", "ie8mode",
   "extensions.ietab2.hasRun", true
   );

The first setting makes sure it's enabled.  The second setting tells it to render pages in IE8 Standards Mode, since it uses IE7 by default and there's no reason you should be using that.  There's also an IE9 mode if you have that installed, but 8 is the highest version available for Windows XP.  The third setting helps prevent it from opening a welcome tab the first time it's used, but it also requires an edit to be effective.

When you first use this extension it will pop up a changelog, which I think would be annoying and/or confusing for end users.  If that's not a huge deal for you you can package this extension as a MSI without any edits and push it out.  If you want to go the extra mile you can remove the line of code that does that, but it requires getting the edited extension signed before it can be used on Firefox 48 and later.

If you're willing to do that, edit chrome\content\ietabOverlay.js and find and delete this line:

gIeTab2.checkShowIntro(); 

Then follow the rest of the instructions here to get it signed before packaging it into a MSI.

In the login script there's a variable called ieTabRules which is where you put the regular expressions that determine which sites get opened in an IE tab.  Add entries like below.  Because they're regular expressions you have to include asterisks at the end.

var ieTabRules = new Array(
   "http://*update.microsoft.com/*",
   "http://www.windowsupdate.com/*"
   );

If you want to configure any other settings go to about:config in your browser, look at what's available under extensions.ietab2, and add what you want to firefoxSettings.