Greg Miller <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I'm including blocking of future versions of Mozilla in the next > revision of my dynamic site code due to this issue (I don't have to > treat Mozilla any better than Mozilla treats my sites).
You know that I strongly oppose to any policy that requests unreferenced files from webservers (like /favicon.ico). But blocking Mozilla in general is nonsense! We should not punish web users for some netscape folk's faults. > I was wondering if there was any way to check (via JS or whatever) whether > a user had a specific pref enabled? There is only one secure way to find this out: Install a script that is triggered each time /favicon.ico is requested! > I'd prefer to be able to simply kick > out people who have this misfeature enabled. Kicking people is the wrong way! If you are skillfull in programming dynamic site code there are several solutions: 1. Redirecting all requests for /favicon.ico to the browser vendor's website was described long ago. >From <http://www.favicon.com>: | RedirectMatch permanent .*/favicon\.ico$ URL | | where URL is the URL of either: | �1) an icon named something other than favicon.ico, on your own site | �2) http://www.microsoft.com/favicon.ico/requests/are/flooding/my/error/log Since microsoft nowadays is no more the main evil-doer things are no more that easy if you want to direct your revenge to the right target. You'll have to write a script instead that reads and interprets the browser string and redirects the requests accordingliy to <http://www.mozilla.org/favicon.ico/requests/are/flooding/my/error/log> or <http://www.konqueror.org/favicon.ico/requests/are/flooding/my/error/log> or <http://www.microsoft.com/favicon.ico/requests/are/flooding/my/error/log> The disadvantage is that this still costs your visitor's bandwidth, the advantage is that browser-users will hardly recognize this and will not be disturbed too much. If you really want this to have any effect to Netscape's/Mozilla's policy you need masses of webmasters doing the same, before [EMAIL PROTECTED] will even notice this bunch of 404-errors at one speciffic ressource. So if you want other webmasters to follow your example, make it easy for them. Provide and promote your script, documentation and guidance how to insatll it! 2. Much better than punishing web users or just ranting: Help Mozilla users to repair their browser! This needed a small piece of XPI that switches the hidden /favicon.icon grabbing pref (I hope it still exists ...) to OFF. Most users will never start to edit their 'userpref.js' by hand but if you provide a simple solution - just klick on this link and then press OK to allow installation - a lot more users may follow your wishes. 3. After you have created the XPI auto-configurator you may combine 1. and 2. Each first request for http://www.your-server/favicon.ico redirects users to your site where the "stop-aggressive-favicon-grabbing.xpi" is provided and asks users (politely!) to use it to repair their misconfigured browser. These are possible measures that may be taken if you really want to do something usefull to "strike back" against /favicon.ico. Isn't it a pitty that we have to spend any time with such stupid ideas instead od evangelizing for wide use of <link rel="icon" ...>? Greeting, Michi -- Homepage: <http://michael.nahrath.de> PGP-ID: 0x9A4C704C PGP-fingerprint: 3ABA ADC6 6713 4FB5 36D0 B0BD D7D7 517F 9A4C 704C
