accessing microsoft live meeting from a mac

I used my Mac to access a live meeting months ago. Everything was fine. Since then I upgraded my Java install and then it become difficult. Live Meeting has a test page so you can test compatibility in advance of the meeting. This blog post goes through what to do to get it working with Java 8. (Java 7 after a certain patch level has the same issues).

Go to the test page and click “join meeting.” You’ll get one or two pop-ups similar to the following with the error message “Application Blocked By Java Security” and the detail “For security, applications must now meet the requirements for the High or Very High security settings, or be part of the Exception Site List, to be allowed to run”. Note the location. The number could change. For me it was https://fwd125.livemeeting.com

safari1It would be nice if Microsoft – a large company – would sign their applet to make this unnecesary, but ok.

  1. System Preferences
  2. Java
  3. Security
  4. Click “edit site list”
  5. Try the URL you noted (https://fwd125.livemeeting.com in my example)
  6. Add

It now looks like:

safari2

At this point, restart your browser. If you just re-load the page, it will not pick up on the new settings. If you did it correctly, you will see one or two prompts of:

safari3

If you try this in Safari, it will hang forever with the screen:

safari4

According to this thread, you need a 64 bit browser to use Java now. (Thanks for the error message Oracle. Failing silently is the way to go. Ok done with the sarcasm.) Safari and Chrome are 32 bit. Switching to Firefox.

To start with, you get a misleading error about Firefox not being supported. Ignore it and click “enter meeting” anyway.

firefox4

Next you get to similar warnings to confirm you really want to run the applet. Click run twice:

firefox3

You may need to click the address bar to allow it to run the applet:

firefox2

At this point, you may get the blue hang screen we saw in Safari. This time, click the brick icon in the popup and allow.

firefox5

And finally – success:

firefox6