Here’s an oldy, but a goody (well, if we consider SharePoint 2010 public sites oldies). Don’t worry, it works in SharePoint 2013 also.
Have you tried to build a public facing SharePoint site and you get plugin prompts on some browsers (Chrome, Safari, etc…)? Even worse, sometimes these show up as plugin errors. Do you know what that is? It’s the ActiveX IM markers in SharePoint trying to ask you if you want to install. These are those little symbols that show up next to peoples names in SharePoint so you know whether they are online or not.
That’s weird – what anonymous, public facing site needs IM markers? These are anoymous sites that people don’t log into unless editing content (usually). Well, the reasoning is pretty simple, the code runs on “all” SharePoint sites because it is located in the init.js file.
But, it’s easy to turn off. All you have to do is override the javascript functions in your master page. Just place the following code in your Master Page (I typically put it right before the closing of my head tag):
<script type="text/javascript">
function ProcessImn(){}
function ProcessImnMarkers(){}
</script>
Pretty simple huh? All it does is override the functions that call this code.
But wait! What if you want IM markers when people log into your SharePoint site. Well, it’s possible. Did you know that it’s possible to wrap code in special controls called SPSecurityTrimmedControls. These controls determine a users access levels and then either writes the html/js to the page or not. This article is not really about SPSecurityTrimmed controls. You can read about them here: http://blogs.technet.com/b/chad/archive/2009/12/03/tip-12_3a00_-hide-in-plain-view-with-sharepoint_3a00_spsecuritytrimmedcontrol.aspx or here http://whitepages.unlimitedviz.com/2013/03/how-to-display-specific-content-to-anonymous-or-authenticated-users-in-sharepoint/. So, if you “really” think you need IM markers for logged in users, see if you can get creative with the SPSecurityTrimmedControls and wrap the code I mentioned above.
That’s my quick tip for the day. Look for more to come.
