Known issues
Availability of the WebSocket interface
Web Signer listens for incoming WebSocket connections on the local loopback network interface (localhost) of the computer, using the first available TCP port from the set of 2378, 3546, 4384, 5147, 5692, 6378, 7678, 7681, 9799 and 9796.
If none of these ports is available, the WebSocket interface will not be available and document signing will not be possible.
Apple Safari browser
In general, the Web Signer application can communicate with any browser that considers localhost to be a so-called potentially trustworthy origin as defined by the W3C “Secure Contexts” specification.
In Google Chrome, this feature has been available since version 53, released in 2016. In Mozilla Firefox, this feature has been available since version 55, released in 2017. In Apple Safari, this feature has been under discussion without any result since 2017.
Unfortunately, we have no way to influence when Apple decides to support this or any other technology in its browser. However, we are actively monitoring the situation and will respond as soon as Safari catches up with other browsers.
Defining a custom certificate store on macOS
The macOS operating system does not allow its users to easily access some special directories, such as individual applications located in the /Applications directory or the /usr directory.
If you need to access such a directory in the dialog displayed by Web Signer when selecting your own PKCS#11 library, you can work around this limitation of the operating system by using the Shift+Command+G keyboard shortcut and then entering the path to the desired directory directly.
Application icon is not displayed on Debian
When the Web Signer application is running on Debian, its yellow icon may not be displayed on the menu bar. This is a known limitation of the GNOME desktop environment in this distribution, and you can work around it using the following steps:
- Install the
gnome-shell-extension-appindicatorpackage. - Restart the computer.
- Use the “Extensions” application to enable the “Ubuntu AppIndicator” extension.
- Restart the computer.
Bringing the main application window to the foreground
The main application window cannot be brought to the foreground by a request from a web browser running on a Linux operating system with the GNOME desktop environment. This problem is caused by the “focus stealing prevention” feature of the GNOME desktop environment and can be resolved, for example, by installing a suitable extension for GNOME Shell.