alio & Firefox 52

Post date: Apr 3, 2017 12:38:07 PM

March 31, 2017 By Matt & Theresa:

For those of you using Firefox, if you recently updated to the latest version of Firefox (Version 52) you no doubt noticed that alio no longer works with Firefox. The reason for this has to do with Firefox and Java. alio requires Java to run, and if you are accessing alio via a web browser, you will need that web browser to utilize Java. However, starting with Firefox 52, Firefox no longer enables Java in-browser, which means alio can't run in Firefox anymore. This issue is anticipated to be a permanent issue with Firefox. Since Chrome disabled Java about a year ago, that leaves Internet Explorer as the last remaining browser to allow Java in-browser on all their versions.

We do want to point out that the updates that were done to server 2 do not correct the issue with Firefox. The simple reason that the issue is with Firefox, not the hosted servers. What that means is that even though server 2 is back up and running, if you've updated to Firefox 52, alio still will not work with it. This situation was not changed by the recent server maintenance.

However, there is good news regarding the future of alio access. There is a way to access alio without having to go through a browser, called JWS (Java Web Service). In a nutshell, JWS bypasses browsers for alio access, meaning that browser changes are now no longer a major issue. JWS is an Oracle product (just like Java) which means that it works with all versions of Java, so there should no longer be any concerns about what Java version you have on your machine. For alio users, JWS will appear as a desktop icon that when clicked will directly take you to your login screen.

JWS required some maintenance to the server to function, which was performed on server 2 during the outage. The same required maintenance for JWS will be performed on server 1 shortly. We are currently working on instructions on how you can obtain and utilize JWS, so look for those directions to be sent in the near future.

In the meantime, until we have JWS ready to be released to everyone (which won't be long), what you need to do is move to server 2 as described in the original email, and if you are on Firefox 52, you will still need to access alio via Internet Explorer.