Chrome 37 no longer supports showModalDialog as of version 37 and I’m hearing reports of odd webmail issues (I manage an Exchange server for my company).
I just verified this on Exchange 2010’s OWA with all the latest patches. Chrome 37’s lack of showModalDialog support means the pop-ups that OWA uses no longer work. The address book and insert-attachment pop-ups are completely broken this morning for Chrome users. This is easy to recreate. Create a new email and then click on To, CC, or the attachment icon. Nothing happens. Google has a statement here about how only .006% of the web uses showModalDialog and why they’re pulling it. What they don’t realize is that its used by an important .006% (a lot of Microsoft products). Suddenly breaking every implementation of every Microsoft Exchange webmail instance is fairly ridiculous, especially since this wasn’t publicized in a large way, nor did Google work with MS to make sure MS already had patches out to support this change. Meanwhile, both Firefox and IE work just fine.
Google claims this feature, which stems from the MS dominated IE4 days, was “never formalized” and a “security risk” so they just removed it. While I agree that MS was fast and loose about pushing defacto web standards, I simply can’t agree about being fast and loose about pulling them either. The comments on that page also claim Dynamics CRM and other products are affected. I think the age of Chrome as this lightweight friendly browser are over. Every month seems to bring in another questionable management decision. I think its time to re-visit Firefox as the “just works” browser and leave the Chrome experiment for a while, especially for business use. I’m certainly not against change and progressing to only formalized standards. I just think Chrome’s changes can just be managed better and with more notice. Swamping the helpdesk and frustrating end-users shouldn’t be how this stuff is done correctly.
Reference:
Chrome 37 update breaks Exchange webmail.
http://nothingjustworks.com/chrome-37-update-breaks-exchange-webmail/
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