Planning for Browser Support

In Reporting Services, you use a Web browser to view reports and run Report Manager. Not all report functionality is supported by all browsers. This topic describes the browser requirements for Report Manager, Report Viewer, feature availability for the supported browsers, authentication requirements, and script requirements.

Browser Requirements for Report Manager

To run Report Manager and use Report Manager to view reports, you must use Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0 or higher and scripting must be enabled. Internet Explorer 8.0 or higher is recommended.

Note

Scripting is enabled by default. However, if you are using Internet Explorer, you can modify script settings in the Security tab of the Internet Options dialog box. In the Security tab, when you select the zone through which you access Report Manager (in most cases, this is the Local intranet zone), you can click Customize Level to enable or disable different types of script functionality.

Browser Requirements and Recommendations for directly Viewing Reports

To directly view reports, rather than viewing them through Report Manager, you can use URL Access to link to the report and the report viewer. With URL access you can choose from a variety of supported browsers.

Note   If you are accessing a report server from a Macintosh computer, we recommend that you use Safari. If you are using a SharePoint product that is integrated with Reporting Services, see Plan browser support (Windows SharePoint Services).

Authentication Requirements

Browsers support specific authentication schemes that must be handled by the report server in order for the client request to succeed. The following table identifies the authentication types supported by each browser, the authentication scheme that each browser uses by default when connecting to a computer that runs a Windows operating system, and whether additional report server configuration is required to support authentication requests from that browser.

Browser type

Supports

Browser default

Server default

Internet Explorer

Negotiated, Kerberos, NTLM, Basic

Negotiate

Yes. Default authentication settings work with Internet Explorer.

Firefox

Negotiated, NTLM, Basic

NTLM

Yes. Default authentication settings work with Firefox.

Safari

Basic

Basic

Yes. Default authentication settings work with Safari.

Script Requirements

To use the report viewer, you must configure your browser to run scripts.

If scripting is not enabled, you receive the following message when you open a report: "Your browser does not support scripts or has been configured to not allow scripts to run. Click here to view this report without scripts". If you choose to view the report without script support, the report is rendered in HTML without report viewer capabilities such as the report toolbar and the document map.

Note

The report toolbar is part of the HTML Viewer component and by default appears at the top of every report that is rendered in a browser window. The report viewer provides features that let you search the report for information, scroll to a specific page, adjust the page size for viewing purposes, and so on. For more information about the report toolbar or HTML Viewer, see Finding, Viewing, and Managing Reports (Report Builder 3.0 and SSRS).