On 10/29/2009 5:18 PM, Phillip Jones wrote:
> David E. Ross wrote:
>> On 10/29/2009 12:36 PM, Ken Rudolph wrote [in part]:
>>> I previously wrote [also in part]:
>>>> On 10/29/2009 8:52 AM, Ken Rudolph wrote [in part]:
>>>>> I seem to have solved this for the time being by adding
>>>>> "Firefox/3.5.4" to the general.useragent.extra.seamonkey line in
>>>>> about:config. Am I causing any potential permanent harm with this?
>>>> I really think you should indeed install an extension to do this and not
>>>> make the "Firefox" portion permanent. Good extensions will
>>>> automatically result in reverting back to your real UA string when you
>>>> terminate and then relaunch SeaMonkey. This is very important. You
>>>> want as many Web accesses as possible to show that they were from
>>>> SeaMonkey and not from Firefox. Otherwise, Web developers will have not
>>>> incentive to accommodate SeaMonkey. (The proper accommodation is to
>>>> sniff for "Gecko" and not for "Firefox". The best accommodation is to
>>>> create Web pages that don't require sniffing.)
>>> I don't think it's my job to try to educate web developers. I'm a
>>> pragmatist who just wants to be able to access my bill pay web site.
>>> I wish web developers would sniff for "Gecko", of course...but I
>>> can't see my paltry browsing having any affect on them.
>> Do you like SeaMonkey? Do you want development efforts to continue? If
>> Web server logs indicate no requests from SeaMonkey -- because users
>> permanently spoof for Firefox -- what is the incentive to continue
>> supporting SeaMonkey?
>>
>> This is not an issue of educating developers. This is an issue of
>> protecting the SeaMonkey project. If someone complains that a Web page
>> cannot be viewed via SeaMonkey, I don't think it's a good idea to
>> provide data that allows the site owner to reply: "No one uses SeaMonkey."
>>
>> With an appropriate extension (PrefBar is my choice but not the only
>> one), you can easily spoof Firefox when necessary but tell all others
>> that SeaMonkey is indeed in use without any mention of Firefox.
>>
>> As far as financial institutions that refuse to sniff for "Gecko", I
>> have a separate SeaMonkey profile only for accessing those accounts.
>> There, I permanently spoof Firefox but with a UA string that says:
>> Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.1.4)
>> Gecko/20091017 SeaMonkey/2.0 NOT Firefox/3.5.3
>> For this, I put
>> user_pref("general.useragent.extra.spoof", "NOT Firefox/3.5.3");
>> in the user.js file in that profile's directory. This ensures that
>> everything prior to the "NOT" is current and that I don't have to change
>> it. (I do change the user.js occasionally to update the Firefox
>> version.) If I have a dispute with a financial institution about
>> supporting SeaMonkey, this UA string allows me to tell them to examine
>> their server logs more carefully.
>>
> Is there a place to report such institutions that use browser sniffers.
> They shouldn't. Or to get them to sniff on gecko instead of a particular
> application?
>
File a Tech Evangelism bug report at <https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/>.
On the report, mark it as blocking bug #334967.
If you don't have a bugzilla.mozilla.org account and don't want one,
post a notice in this newsgroup and ask if someone else will file the
bug report.
There are 129 open bug reports of this type. They are of concern not
only for SeaMonkey but also Firefox and other Mozilla-based projects.
For example, during early development, the UA string for Firefox does
not contain "Firefox" but does contain "Gecko". Improper sniffing
causes problems for testing early builds of new Firefox versions against
real-world Web sites. (At least, this was true in 2006 when bug #334967
was filed.)
--
David E. Ross
<http://www.rossde.com/>
Go to Mozdev at <http://www.mozdev.org/> for quick access to
extensions for Firefox, Thunderbird, SeaMonkey, and other
Mozilla-related applications. You can access Mozdev much
more quickly than you can Mozilla Add-Ons.
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