System and Respondent Requirements

Respondent Requirements

The Forsta survey engine has been designed to comply with HTML standards so that surveys will function as intended in as many browsers as possible. Users should note however that features added to surveys, for example client side scripts, media playing, the use of certain cascading stylesheet properties etc. might alter the default requirements. These are:

• Operating system - any.
• Web browser - any browser supporting HTML 4.01/XHTML and CSS.
• Advanced WI and Dynamic Questions features (optional) - IE 8+. Firefox 10+. Safari (Mac only) 5.1+. Chrome 26+.

Some problems have been reported in which early versions of AOL (4) have corrupted the links in survey invitations sent as HTML email from Authoring. In addition, Netscape 4.x browsers have limited support for CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) and might show pages differently than Internet Explorer. In addition, Netscape 4.x also has limited support for Unicode languages.

End Users accessing Pivot Views will need Flash 5.0 installed.

Note: “Advanced WI features” such as sliders, autosums etc. (go to Advanced WI Features for more information) are supported in IE8+ (Windows), Firefox 2.0+, Chrome 1.0+, and Safari 3.1+ on Windows and Mac. Respondents using other browsers will see the standard survey interface, with "normal" radio buttons, with the exception of Searchable Multi questions, which have no fallback.

Note: "Dynamic Questions" (go to About Dynamic Questions for more information) is supported in IE8+ (Windows), Firefox 2.0+, Chrome 1.0+, and Safari 2+ (also for Mac). This functionality is only available in surveys using "Survey Layouts" (go to About Survey Layouts for more information). If Survey Layouts is not used, then the page layout will be static and the questions will appear on the same page. However as the logic is only evaluated when the page is submitted (when the respondent clicks the Forward button), an error message may result if for example one of the initially hidden questions is missing a response. There is therefore no fall-back for Dynamic Questions. However the DynamicQuestionsEnabled() function can be used to either screen or create an optional routing for respondents who do not have the required browser.

AOL

Note that AOL has its own interpretation of how to display links and HTML code. The following AOL browsers/e-mail programs have been tested by Forsta:

AOL 4, 6, 8, and AOL webmail on a Windows 2000 platform.

E-mail invitations were sent to all these versions as both plain text and HTML formatted. The test results are as follows:

• HTML formatted links do not work on AOL 4. The links are corrupted. A single quote is inserted before and after the link.
• HTML formatted links are clickable in AOL 6 and up (AOL 5 has been not tested).
• Links sent in plain text are not clickable in any client version of AOL.
• Plain text and HTML formatted mail is displayed correctly when viewed using the HTML webmail portal on AOL's website.

Note: These are known issues with AOL browsers, and are solely due to the AOL browsers' interpretation of links and HTML code.

Our proposed instructions for an AOL user are as follows:

Send the emails as HTML format. Most AOL users have probably upgraded to 6 or better, but include the following instructions for pre-6 client users:

• If you experience problems when clicking on the link provided, access the survey as follows: Copy the link and paste it into your AOL address bar, then press the [Enter] key on your keyboard or click [Go] on the address bar.

3rd Party Software Components

Forsta products use a number of 3rd-party components in the software.

Browser Requirements

Important
The browser manufacturers’ interpretations of web standards may vary, and this can result in slight differences across the different browsers. Forsta therefore recommends that users test their surveys, Panel Portal surveys, and Reportal Viewer/Public Reports, on different browsers to ensure they look and function as expected/required on the different browsers.

The browser requirements for Forsta Plus are as follows.

Forsta Plus is designed for use with a 1024 x 768 screen resolution at 100% browser zoom with the quick-launch bar collapsed. If your system is set to a lower resolution or a different zoom level, this may prevent Forsta Plus being used. If a Mac is to be used, it must have the right-click functionality available.

To allow your Internet Explorer browser to work optimally towards the Forsta software, we strongly advise you to do the following:

1. Allow for new versions of pages to be checked automatically.
2. Go to Tools > Internet Options > General > Settings > Temporary Internet Files.
3. In the “Check for newer versions of stored pages” list in the upper part of the dialog, select Automatically.
4. Check the size of the Temporary Internet Files Folder (TIFF). If you allow the cache size to be too large, this will have an adverse effect on how Internet Explorer performs the automatic check in the first point.
5. If you are not already there (see above), go to Tools > Internet Options > General > Settings > Temporary Internet Files.
6. The default setting is 250MB; this should be enough. If it is currently much higher then you can reduce the size to around the default.
7. Add the Forsta Plus Authoring URL(s) to the Internet Explorer Trusted Sites.
8. Go to Tools > Internet Options > Security and in the Select a zone... area click the Trusted sites icon. This activates the Sites button; click this button to open the Trusted sites dialog.
9. Add the following two URLs: author.confirmit.com and author.euro.confirmit.com (type the addresses then click Add).
10. If you select not to include Forsta Plus Authoring in your Trusted Sites, you must disable pop-up blocking for these sites under Tools > Internet Options > Privacy > Pop-up Blocker > Settings.

Note: When using CATI and/or CAPI installations on Windows 8, the appropriate author.confirmit.com and/or author.euro.confirmit.com URLs must be made Trusted Sites.

1. Allow client cookies and session cookies from the Forsta sites (if your browser does not accept cookies, you will not be able to log on).
2. Go to Tools > Internet Options > Privacy > Sites.
3. Add the following two URLs: author.confirmit.com, author.euro.confirmit.com (type the addresses then click Allow).
4. Alternatively, set the general cookie setting to “Medium-High” (a lower setting is not recommended.)

When Forsta Plus is updated, excessive or old versions of temporary Internet files can cause problems. Therefore the first time you start Forsta Plus after a new version of the program has been released, you should clear the cache of all the old temporary Internet files.

1. Go to Tools > Internet Options > General.
2. In the Browsing history section, click the Delete button.

Note: The system-generated error messages that are presented to respondents are translated into English, Norwegian, Swedish, German, French, Spanish, Finnish, Danish, Italian, Dutch, Portuguese, Japanese, Chinese Simplified, Chinese Traditional, Korean, Arabic, Russian and Hebrew. For other languages, the error messages will be defaulted into the main category (for example: Venezuelan Spanish into Spanish). If a language is not available, the error messages will be displayed in English, which is the overall default language.

When projects are migrated from one server to another, for example if a user is changing from an On-Premise installation to SaaS, custom error messages for languages that are not covered in Forsta Plus standard list will not be included in the migration and will have to be moved "manually".