There could be several reasons for this.
- The website owner is purposefully disallowing Internet Explorer log-ins to the content protected area.
- Internet Explorer 8 does not conform to web standards as well as Firefox does.
- The configuration of the content protected area was not done properly.
In apache (the most commonly used web server as opposed to IIS server), creating a password protected area using .htaccess and .htpasswd is somewhat simple.
.htpasswd would look something like this:
Code:
test:$apr1$FtJHH...$5U.xCYpMXGwrOb0S.FwY.1
The first line, test, is the username, while the second line is an encrypted password that translates into test as well.
.htaccess would look something like this:
Code:
AuthUserFile /var/www/whatever/.htpasswd
AuthName "Secret Place"
AuthType Basic
<Limit GET POST>
require user test
</Limit>
No magic voodoo here, and it will work fine in IE8 and all other browsers. Both files are placed in the parent directory for the restricted area. In IIS, permissions are handled differently, and usually by Active Directory associations or custom users or groups using IIS Configuration. It is a relatively complex procedure, which I do not even care for, as I would suspect others would feel the same, which is why so many tend to use Linux/apache for web hosting...
IIS is proven to be good for web server clustering and ASP, however.
Of course, this does not necessarily solve your problem, only indicate that no sort of unusually complex activity takes place when creating restricted parts of websites. The method I have described above allows any browser in.
But, if the webmaster is using some kind of proprietary or special code, this could result in problems with any browser, that are unpredictable and unknown. My example is the most common way it is done for the most basic circumstance.
You may be able to determine if something odd is on-going by using web-sniffer on the URL you are trying to get into by using web-sniffer at:
View HTTP Request and Response Header This may give you some indication as to how the server you are accessing is configured, to a limited extent.