The Revolution Weblog: Microsoft Fingerprint Reader

Wed 24
May
2006

Microsoft Fingerprint Reader - DOES NOT WORK WITH FIREFOX!
Posted At : 11:19 AM | Posted By : tony

So, I bought this jazzy little fingerprint reader made by Microsoft from woot.com the other day. Much to my surprise, shouldn't surprise me, but it did... It DOES NOT WORK with FireFox. Microsoft has apparently disabled the ability of this to work with FireFox, and with that, its basically a paperweight now.

Anyway, just a caveat to those of you who are interested in making your computer life a bit easier... if you are on a domain, the windows logon feature will not work, and if you are using FireFox, it will not work.

BUM DEAL!

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Related Categories: Firefox, wtf??!!, ColdFusion, Tony Weeg, Code

Comments

yeah I saw that. The woot is really hit or miss. I got some a couple decent little mp3 players for my son and they lasted forever (well a year for a teenager is forever). I also bought a vacuum cleaner that smells like butt when you run it and is so loud it sounds like you are vacuuming with a Mac Truck and the worst coffee maker I've ever owned. It's a crap shoot.

Posted By Brandon Ellis / Posted At 5/24/06 11:23 AM

I've read in the past that this is a system-level technology which is exposed to the browser... the hardware <a href="http://www.microsoft.com/hardware/mouseandkeyboard/ProductDetails.aspx?pid=036&active_tab=systemRequirements">FAQ</a> describes which OS can use it, but doesn't mention browsers. I'm guessing it's exposed as an ActiveX interface, so it might be possible to work a way to use it in non-Microsoft browsers, so long as you're still on a Microsoft operating system...?

Posted By John Dowdell / Posted At 5/24/06 3:06 PM

Tony,

I hope this helps you out. I recently did a review of a Firefox extension that does exactly what you want. Check it out.

http://www.dcs-media.com/Detail.aspx?ArticleId=321

Posted By jdanylko / Posted At 5/24/06 5:39 PM

Besides Fingerfox, now there's a new fingerprint-based password manager for Firefox (and it does work with DigitalPersona Password Manager with IE!) called FingerAuth. The website is http://www.fingerauth.com
Hope this information is useful.
Regards,
John

Posted By John / Posted At 6/15/07 7:17 AM

Firefox is for amateur hacks anyway, why bother....

Posted By Van / Posted At 1/31/08 5:44 PM