With great standards-compliance and cross-platform support, Firefox is becoming the browser of choice not just for end-users but for internet and intranet developers as well. Once it’s deployed on corporate networks, however, the Macintosh edition often can’t see past the firewall.

Your biggest client’s firewall blocks FTP, your Macs can’t follow Outlook’s backslash-style file links, and that hotel promising “free internet in every room” really only offers web browsing. So how can co-workers trade information from diverse locations, update their calendars from on the road, or just exchange file addresses for multiple operating systems? It can be difficult to find an easily accessible, relatively secure, and fully cross-platform method to host shared documents.

Out of the blue, your server stops responding. The screen goes gray for a moment, the machine restarts, and by the time you even know it happened everything is fine. Then it crashes again. This time you hear, “I just did a Spotight search on the XServe, and then everyone was disconnected…”

Some jobs are too important to be left to your users. While native services like file and print sharing begin when Macintosh systems first boot, third party applications are often left to start as Login Items, configured out of System Preferences on a single account. For essential services, this method can range from unreliable to disastrous.