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Question
Tuesday, March 3, 2015 1:20 AM | 1 vote
Hello,
My organization blocks IE. We can't access anything externally with IE except for approved exceptional situations. They don't block Chrome and FireFox. Visual Studio 2015 (and maybe also earlier versions) appear to use IE internally to sign in to VSO, display help, download packages, etc. Third party plugins do the same (probably by default). Is there any way to change VS' internal browser from IE to another browser? I'm sure that its using IE because I have used Wireshark to monitor the traffic, pick out the "forbidden" URL, and have my IT add an exception for the URL. While this process works, it is slow. Plus there is the risk of discovering a new URL too near a deadline, IT unexpectedly removing the exceptions, etc.
NOTE: Changing to an "external editor" in Tools | Options | Environment | Web Browser does not work. It still uses IE.
NOTE: Its not a proxy issue. I have the proxy setup in IE (Tools | Internet Options | Connections | LAN Settings). I have also tried adding the proxy to the devenv.exe.config. I then realized it is just IE getting blocked. If I paste the URL into IE, I get my organization's forbidden page. If I then paste the same URL into Chrome, it works perfectly (but not helpful since it was not initiated by VS).
Thanks
All replies (12)
Saturday, March 7, 2015 12:57 AM âś…Answered | 5 votes
Hi again Jack,
As you mention, the "Browse with" setting does not fix my problem. I have had it set to Chrome forever. It still uses IE internally for all of my issues (and probably more).
Here is my feature request:
Thanks for voting for it!
sebuck
Wednesday, March 4, 2015 6:03 AM
Hi sebuck,
>>Visual Studio 2015 (and maybe also earlier versions) appear to use IE internally to sign in to VSO, display help, download packages, etc.
As far as I know, it would be by design, I mean that it uses the IE as the internal default browser like view help viewer document or others.
Since the real VS2015 RTM version is not release now, if possible, you could submit this feature request: http://visualstudio.uservoice.com/forums/121579-visual-studio. The Visual Studio product team is listening to user voice there. You can send your idea there and people can vote.
For the load version, I get this extension tool for VS2010, I didn't install it since I also couldn't install the third party browser in my side, but if possible, you could test it in your side with the VS2010.
https://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/233945ae-0b7b-47e7-9b02-c5a11798afb5
But for VS2012 or high versions, it seems that no extension tool for them now.
Best Regards,
Jack
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Wednesday, March 4, 2015 6:54 AM | 1 vote
Hello,
My organization blocks IE. We can't access anything externally with IE except for approved exceptional situations. They don't block Chrome and FireFox. Visual Studio 2015 (and maybe also earlier versions) appear to use IE internally to sign in to VSO, display help, download packages, etc. Third party plugins do the same (probably by default). Is there any way to change VS' internal browser from IE to another browser? I'm sure that its using IE because I have used Wireshark to monitor the traffic, pick out the "forbidden" URL, and have my IT add an exception for the URL. While this process works, it is slow. Plus there is the risk of discovering a new URL too near a deadline, IT unexpectedly removing the exceptions, etc.
NOTE: Changing to an "external editor" in Tools | Options | Environment | Web Browser does not work. It still uses IE.
NOTE: Its not a proxy issue. I have the proxy setup in IE (Tools | Internet Options | Connections | LAN Settings). I have also tried adding the proxy to the devenv.exe.config. I then realized it is just IE getting blocked. If I paste the URL into IE, I get my organization's forbidden page. If I then paste the same URL into Chrome, it works perfectly (but not helpful since it was not initiated by VS).
Thanks
I don't know what you mean by using Wireshark to pick out a forbidden URL. What would that have to do with Internet Explorer? If a URL is forbidden then nothing should be able to connect to it.
Perhaps the internal WebBrowser in Visual Studio, which Visual Studio 2012 apparently uses as well as Internet Explorer I suppose, gets its settings from Internet Explorer. At least that's what the image below appears to advise. As any settings altered in Internet Explorer are used by the internal webbrowser except for homepage I guess.
Therefore this may work or not. Use Firefox from the machine your Visual Studio is on and navigate to http://whatsmyuseragent.com/ so you can see the user agent that Firefox uses. Copy and paste the user agent into notepad or something. Then go to this link How-To Geek How to change your browsers user agent without installing any extensions and perhaps you can alter Internet Explorer to use a Firefox user agent. That may fool the firewall so it thinks Firefox is being used as I don't know how it could know otherwise which browser is being used. Although if it works it may tick off your IT guys.
I forgot to add the user agents for IE and Chrome display at Whats My User Agent from my system as below. IE first, Chrome second. I don't have Firefox.
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; Trident/7.0; yie9; rv:11.0) like Gecko
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/36.0.1985.125 Safari/537.36
La vida loca
Wednesday, March 4, 2015 7:08 AM
What's my user agent also has a list of common user agent strings and some Firefox ones are listed.
La vida loca
Wednesday, March 4, 2015 7:21 AM
Here's another link which may be helpful for persisting the user agent string in IE since I looked at that How To Geek site and it advises that when IE exits after altering its user agent string that it returns to using its original user agent string. So this link advises how to change the user agent string in the registry.
PCTools by Symantec - Change the Internet Explorer User Agent String (All Windows)
La vida loca
Friday, March 6, 2015 1:14 AM
Hi Jack,
I still don't know if this is by design and there is no way to solve this problem. However, I will definitely submit this as a feature request. Maybe at least this will help me to understand the problem better.
I had the same problem to a lesser degree in earlier versions of VS. The problem has exploded with 2015. Therefore, I have tried that extension. It only changed which browser my project .html/etc. files opened in. It was the equivalent of manually changing the "View source in" setting that Mr. Monkeyboy describes below. This extension makes it easier to change for devs that must change it often. This setting seems to be independent of what VS uses for some of its internal communication. It almost appears that it just uses an embedded IE web control that therefore ignores what you configure as your OS default browser, IE settings, etc.
Thanks again...
Friday, March 6, 2015 1:48 AM
Hi Mr. Monkeyboy,
As you guessed, I unfortunately can't change the user agent string. My organization would not be happy if they found out. So it is not an option.
Whenever I try to access anything from IE, I can see the HTTP traffic in Wireshark. Lot's of "M-SEARCH"s and "GET"s. Eventually, it fails with "HTTP/X.X XXX Forbidden (text/html)". I assume this means that it was blocked by IT. IE will then display an internal page telling me what I have attempted to access and that IE has vulnerabilities and can not be used. It doesn't matter which version of IE, they all get blocked. If I take that exact same URL and paste it into Chrome or Firefox, Wireshark displays similar HTTP traffic, but eventually a "CONNECT" message.
As I mentioned to Jack, it almost appears that VS uses an embedded IE web control that therefore ignores what you configure as your OS' default browser, IE settings, etc. Another example is that I can put "http://www.google.com" into a VS source file, click on the URL, VS then brings up a new VS window and tries to load the page, but I get the same "attempted to access blah blah blah, but IE has vulnerabilities and can not be used. If I then select the http://www.google.com from the VS window and paste it into Chrome, no problems!
This has become a big problem now that VS 2015 requires me to log in regularly. Using Wireshark, I was able to discover that the CTP4 login process was using a bunch of URLs including *.microsoftonline.com. So I had my IT department add some IE exceptions for them. The login worked! But now CTP6 is attempting to use *.microsoftonline-p.com. OK, I could have them add more exceptions... However, while this process works, it is slow. Plus there is the risk of discovering a new URL too near a deadline, IT unexpectedly removing the exceptions, etc.
sebuck
Friday, March 6, 2015 3:02 AM
Thanks for Mr. Monkeyboy's help.
Hi sebuck,
Thanks for your friendly response.
I didn't find the specific extension tool for this issue. One suggestion from this MSDN document:
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/11k47e6y.aspx?f=255&MSPPError=-2147217396
Under Tools->Option->Environment->Web Browser, use the Browse With dialog box to replace the Visual Studio internal Web browser, which is a version of Internet Explorer, by using a different, external Web browser.
But I'm afraid that it doesn't fulfill the real requirements of yours.
>> However, I will definitely submit this as a feature request. Maybe at least this will help me to understand the problem better.
If Mr. Monkeyboy's suggestion still no help to you, please submit a feature request, if you submit it, please share us the link here, I will help you vote it.
Sincerely,
Jack
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Monday, March 9, 2015 2:18 AM
Vote it!
Have a nice day,
Jack
We are trying to better understand customer views on social support experience, so your participation in this interview project would be greatly appreciated if you have time. Thanks for helping make community forums a great place.
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Monday, June 27, 2016 12:12 AM
Hello,
The problem is, there is no "Browse with" anywhere.
It was present with Visual Studio 2013, and seems to be gone with 2015.
Looks like it is a Visual Studio bug:
This is happening on two different computers with Windows 10 Pro x64; Chrome browser is current default. Again, the option was present on Visual Studio 2013. When it was replaced with 2015, no "Browse with". Second computer has only Visual Studio 2015, same there.
Unfortunately, I do not expect anybody doing anything: this is not "Publish" button or something like.
Regards,
Andrei
Saturday, July 15, 2017 1:55 PM
Bro you aim right in target,no option browse with,i dont know what about browse with people talk here,seems to me i must go on other IDE ,fuck this crap editor
Thursday, September 14, 2017 10:57 AM | 2 votes
I have a similar problem. VS15 keeps attempting to use Edge, which fails with a Cannot use this Application error. I can paste the same urls into Opera which has no issue doing what it is requested to do- unlike less usable products. I want to use Opera as Edge is functioning more as a repetitive error message generator than as a browser.