I tried my first web page in .net using the visual web developer beta 2 (why am I a sucker for trying out beta software?) and it didn’t work – returning an error message http error 403 Forbidden. Oddly enough, if I opened the same page in Internet explorer it worked ok. From my experience with IIS I knew this was something to do with NTLM authentication but trying to find out where this was configured was rather bewildering. In the end, the post on the microsoft forums gives the answer – “Select the Solution Explorer view, and right click the very first element of the tree (the project itself). Choose property pages and select Start Options. On the Server section, clear the NTLM checkbox and save the configuration and it now works in firefox. MS’s official response is that this is by design to ensure websites are secure. Personally I just wonder how many websites on the internet insist on using NTLM authentication…..not many I guess so I’m afraid this excuse doesn’t ring true to me.
As a side note, I can’t see how you are meant to permalink to the individual post in the forum – there doesn’t seem to be any visible anchors to use. I had to use the WebDevelopers Extension to display the anchors. I’ve logged a bug in the forums on this point too.