IIS: IE doesn't auto authenticate

I've been doing a little web development work recently with MVC and have come across a (very) minor issue when deploying this to my test server.

Essentially, I've deployed to the application to the server but when I access it via the IP Address, I get prompted for my windows credentials. However, when accessing it via server name I am not prompted and I get the (much better) user experience of auto authentication.

It appears that the issue is not with IIS or my MVC app but with my browser and the way it handles different URL patterns. When accessing it via server name (eg HTTP//Servername/App) the browser "knows" the site is internal so automatically authenticates whereas the IP address (HTTP//1.1.1.1/App) could be external and so throws the prompt.

Its explained here in David Wang's blog.

FTP: Make Windows Explorer Interactive

I often use Windows Explorer as my FTP client as its quick and simple to drag and drop files on to a server. However, recently something had changed on my system which meant that when using Explorer the mode wasn't interactive and I was unable to use it in the way I would expect:



After some digging around, I managed to stumble across this MS article which although relevant to Windows 2000 also seemed to work for me running Windows XP SP3.

Essentially you need to edit a couple of options in IE - Tools, Internet Options, Advanced, Enabled Folder View for FTP sites.



A restart of Windows Explorer and a visit to my ftp site got me the much more user friendly:



I can only assume that some windows updates or IT security patch had reset these settings.