Hey, what happened to that ribbon option I used yesterday? Now it’s greyed out and I get a message that ‘This control is currently disabled’. What happened?
No Upload Multiple Documents in Firefox 3.6
What happened is that I was working on another computer yesterday, that has another browser and windows version.
At first sight, SharePoint 2010 seems to work just fine in any of my environments – at least after I stopped trying in Internet Explorer 6. Which made sense, as I had heard that SharePoint 2010 works with different browsers. But I hadn’t looked at the fine print yet.
So I was surprised to see that, for example, in Firefox 3.6 the Datasheet view, Open in Explorer and the option Upload Multiple Documents do not work. Also, the Sync to SharePoint Workspace and Connect to Office do not work on that machine, maybe because it is running Office 2003.
Library ribbon in IE8, Office 2010 and Windows 7 versus Firefox 3.6, Office 2003 and Windows XP
Another example: In Windows XP, the option Upload Multiple Documents does not offer drag & drop functionality. That does not depend on the browser, as my IE8 didn’t help, but on the Windows Explorer functionality of Windows itself it seems.
Upload Multiple Documents by drag& drop works in IE8 Windows 7
And I am still not sure why the options E-mail a link, Download a Copy and Send To are disabled when I select more than one document in the library or a document set. Even in IE8 and Windows 7. Didn’t these work in the beta? Am I doing something wrong or have they been disabled by design?
At least now I know that the ribbon is not just sensitive to the context IN the site, but also to the context OF the site. And if I really want to see what my options are, I take my newest computer, with IE8, Office 2010 and Windows 7.
For the details, see this Technet article Plan browser support (SharePoint Server 2010).
