Accessing webserver with IE or FF on Vista -- FAIL

[Garyoke]

I'm playing around with setting up a couple of kiosks for singers to use to sign up. I've had good luck so far using iJams and connecting with other Macs. My primary karaoke machine is a 15" MacBook Pro, 2.2GHz Core 2 Duo with 4GB RAM. I used the built-in Airport card to create my own local wi-fi network (most of my venues don't have easy access to wi-fi). Great, so far, so good.

Except when I try to connect using an HP/Compaq laptop running Vista (go ahead, say ugh). I've tried using IE and FireFox with no luck. I enter the IP address, then colon, then the webserver port number like so: xxx.xxx.x.xx:xxxx

When using IE, I get a message that says "The webpage cannot be displayed" followed by a prompt to search online for a program I can use to view the page (no luck). When using FireFox, I simply get a blank screen.

This is true whether I use my own created wi-fi network, or when I connect to the wi-fi network at my home, so that's not the issue. And, connecting from multiple Macs works just fine under either network scenario.

Any idea why this might be happening? I'd rather use my wintel laptops as kiosks -- I have several of them and frankly won't be terribly upset if they get dropped, bumped, knocked around, spilled on, etc. I'm not willing to subject my Macs to this abuse.

I'll watch for any suggestions. BTW, I haven't tried XP or Win7.

Thanks,
--G

[dave]

use Safari for Windows

[Garyoke]

Thanks Dave... that did it. Works fine now.

--G

[Garyoke]

Also... any idea when we'll be able to return a search that has more than 200 entries? For example, when I do a search for the Beatles, I get tons of hits because of all my song selections (and duplicate versions, of course, across different brands). Even an increase to just 400 entries would make all the difference in the world to me. Or is this something I can edit in the webserver prefs myself?

Thanks!

--G

[dave]

i'll add a secret pref for that.

ask me about it after the next update, whenever that is, or just peek in the prefs file yourself under the key "Maximum number of items in web search results list".

[Garyoke]

Is that the kjams preference file, or a different preference file for the server?

[dave]

regular prefs.

http://karaoke.kjams.com/wiki/Secret_Prefs

[Garyoke]

Thanks, Dave! I'll look for this pref after the next update (hoping it's coming soon?)...

--G

[dave]

maybe in a couple weeks, unless you need it like right now then you can test it early. write me off list if so.

[DeusExMachina]

Just a quick note:
You still can use IE or firefox (though why you would want to, I do not know) the issue is Bonjour (mDNS). Comes standard in Safari, and launching Safari launches Bonjour. If you want to use IE (UGH!!!) or FireFox, or even Chrome, you just need to use Bonjour for Windows. Once you have this set up, you can use any Windows browser.

[dave]

"Bonjour for Windows" used to install a widget in your IE that let you browse your bonjour services, but they took it out and now call it "Bonjour Print Services", even tho it still does actually work for all services.