Original publication date: March, 2008

Recreating URLs and Bookmarks for Smooth WebCATS Access via HTTPS

Shortly after Softshare switched its hosted WebCATS sites to HTTPS access, some of you reported behavior oddities in the interface. It didn’t take us long to find the culprit: Microsoft Internet Explorer.

After a little research, we discovered that IE6 and IE7 do not gracefully handle HTTP to HTTPS redirects. Things look and act fine at first, but after several minutes into the WebCATS session, strange timeout and display issues start to occur.

The solution? Softshare will be removing the “helpful” redirects that we put in place to ease the transition from HTTP to HTTPS URLs. For example, typing in http://mycenter.softshare.com will no longer seamlessly redirect to https://mycenter.softshare.com. Instead, you will get an error message instructing you to access the secure site directly. This ensures that no one sees performance issues due to being redirected from a non-secure Web site to a secure Web site.

But that is only part of the solution. We also need you to delete and recreate any shortcuts that you have in place for your WebCATS URL (if you haven’t already). These include shortcuts stored in Internet Explorer’s Favorites menu (also known as bookmarks) as well as shortcuts stored directly on your desktop.

Deleting and Recreating a Bookmark in Internet Explorer’s Favorites Menu

  1. From Internet Explorer, click the “Favorites” menu item and locate the WebCATS bookmark from the list of favorites that displays.
  2. Right-click the bookmark and select “Delete” from the context menu that appears.
  3. Open WebCATS by directly typing its new HTTPS address into Internet Explorer.
  4. With the login page displayed, select Favorites|Add to Favorites.
  5. Give the new bookmark a name, designate which folder it should be created in, and click Add.

Deleting and Recreating a URL Shortcut on Your Desktop

  1. From your Windows desktop, right-click on the URL shortcut and select “Delete” from the context menu that appears.
  2. Click Yes at the confirmation prompt.
  3. Open WebCATS by directly typing its new HTTPS address into Internet Explorer.
  4. With the login page displayed, right-click anywhere on the page and, from the context menu that appears, select “Create Shortcut.”
  5. Click Yes at the confirmation prompt.

If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to contact customer support at support@softshare.com or 805-882-2588.

© 2012 Softshare, Inc. All rights reserved. This article is part of an archive of Softshare newsletter articles dating back several years. Some of the screenshots, procedures, or information contained within this article may no longer be 100% accurate or relevant, as Softshare's software and services are very fluid. Thank you for your understanding.