Yesterday when I debugged my website in Visual Web Developer Express, I was greeted by this error “This address is restricted: This address uses a network port which is normally used for purposes other than Web browsing. Firefox has canceled the request for your protection”. There’s even a try again button but same result appear even though I clicked it repeatedly. For almost one year I’ve been using VWD 2005 Express for developing web application never once I’ve encountered such problem.
After much googling turns out this problem is Firefox related, as my development PC in my office uses Fireox as default browser. That’s why I’ve never had this problem before because my home PC and my previous office PC using Microsoft Internet Explorer as default browser. The VMD 2005 Express has a built-in Cassini web server that chooses a random port every time the website is debugged from the IDE. And sometimes Firefox block any http request other than the default 80 port. This bug is also recorded at Mozilla’s bugzilla site for almost two years now but up until now nothing has been done rectify it. See the entry here https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=341636
Actually there’s an easy work-around on this problem. After much googling, I found out there a useful guide posted on this website http://www.purple.dropbear.id.au/node/139.
So I’m going to list out the steps it takes to rectify it:
- Type about:config on the address bar
- You’ll se a list of configuration setting, just right-click anywhere and choose new > String
- A pop-up box will appear, then type” network.security.ports.banned.override”
- Click OK and another box will appear. This time you can key-in any port number you wish to be unblocked. Since I want all my ports to be unblocked, I typed 1-65535
- Click OK and after that click on the try again button and your website can be loaded without any problem now.
WARNING!!!!! Do this at your own risk. I would not be held responsible if your pc/website security compromised resulting from this action
