Microsoft’s OWA browser compatibility chart is the only concrete listing that I have found for Outlook Web Access compatibility. The limited support shown in the “other” browsers category applies to FireFox, Opera, Netscape, Safari, and older Mozilla browsers.

I suspect that most of those brosers support much of the coding in the OWA “Premium” client. Unfortuantely, sticking to Microsoft’s standard procedure, OWA disables many features in browsers other than Internet Explorer 5 and 6. Likewise, they haven’t followed standards and the code in the “Standard” client doesn’t degrade gently in non-IE browsers.

Are Microsoft’s decision-makers tying to play the same hand as all those anti-drug educational programs that just end up making kids more comfortable around drugs? Personally, I’m surprised that by Exchange OWA’s lack of support for other browsers. After all, if OWA worked right then Exchange would have a bigger advantage over the OpenExchange or NetMail XE groupware and SquirrelMail’s web client.

FYI: A “503 Service Unavailable” message in the web browser when OWA is visited does not indicate a compatilibility issue. It is actually a problem on the server; the davex.dll file can not correctly reach the mail or public folder store. Microsoft’s KB article #823159 details the 503 error fix for Exchange Server 2003.

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