DRAUGAS NEWS Lithuanian World Wide News in English
Subscribers using the new Microsoft “Edge” browser have been having problems accessing the Draugas News and Lithuanian Heritage PDF archive files (which are password-protected and open to subscribers only).
When using the Edge browser, when clicking on a password protected link to one of the .PDF files, what should happen is, one should see a form box asking to enter a username and password, to authenticate the user. Instead, one simply gets the message “Authorization Required”, and there is no way to authenticate.
To our knowledge, this problem is limited to the Microsft Edge browser, and has been reported with the Edge mobile version, but not as of yet with the desktop version.
Is your computer using Microsoft Edge? All Windows 10 PCs originally were sold using the “Internet Explorer” web browser, which does not have this problem, but lately, Microsoft has been pushing it’s Edge browser out to Windows 10 users via automatic updates.
One simple solution is to temporarily use browsers other than Edge to access our password-protected .PDF files. Firefox, Chrome, and Opera all appear to work fine (though there may be a problem in the smartphone native Android internet browser as well). Also, in the Microsoft Edge “settings” menu, one can select the option to continue to use Internet Explorer instead of Edge.
There is one way to get around the problem of authentication even when using Microsoft Edge.
What exactly is the problem with user authentication with Microsoft Edge?
Normally, when asking to open a file in a password-protected directory, a browser should put up a form asking for username and password. Once these have been entered, the user is authenticated and can then open up the requested file, or any other file in the password-protected directory. The problem with Edge is, that when a user clicks on a .PDF file in a password-protected directory, instead of showing the form and asking for a password, the Edge browser just gives an error message, saying “Authorization Required”.
We found that this problem is limited to .PDF files: If a user tries to open, say, an HTML file in a password-protected directory, then the password form is proferred in the usual fashion. So, this allows us to offer a work-around. We have created an intermediate text (HTML) file in the same password-protected directory where the .PDF files are stored. The user should click on this intermediate file first, and in response, the Edge browser will show a window asking for a username and password in order to authenticate the user. Once authenticated, then the user can click directly on the password-protected .PDF files and view or download them without problems.
We have posted a link to this intermediate file on both the DRAUGAS NEWS and LITHUANIAN HERITAGE .pdf archive pages.
We are also repeating the instructions here:
Workaround for Microsoft Edge browser (“Authorization Required”) bug:
1) Click on this intermediate file link
2) Write in your username and password to authenticate yourself
3) Navigate back to the page containing the PDF files and then click on the date of the desired PDF file.
Please try it, and if you are still having problems, send an email to the editorial office.