proxy_auth_realm and different browsers

I've been working with an authenticator program for a while and I've
it a trivial and odd problem. I am in a public library and I need to
tell people to enter their card number when they are asked to
authenticate themselves. The proxy_auth_realm allows me to enter some
text - but it displays differenct information on different web
browsers. And even seems to display slightly differently when using
the same web browser on different machines.

How much control do I have. It seems that with NetScape I will always
get a message starting with " Proxy authentication required for " and
ending with "at" hostname: portnumber. The message is a maximum of
three lines long so I can get rid of the end by appending a long
string of dots to the proxy_auth_realm entry in my squid.conf.

MSIE gives one two lines in the form:

"Firewall:" host with no port nuber
"Realm: " and about 40 characters tops.

I assume that this is browser dependent, but I have noticed that when
I password protected a web page the message I used and nothing else,
appeared in the box in NetScape and within the 40 text characters to
the right of "Realm" in MSIE's box. This makes me think that Squid is
adding a few words. If so can I stop it?

--
Josh Kuperman                       
josh@saratoga.lib.ny.us