Two recent threads in mozilla.support.seamonkey on this issue resulted in very lengthy discussions. See "Seamonkey and U.S. Government site does not work" at <news://news.mozilla.org:119/[email protected]> and "Web site work in IE but not in Seamonkey 2.0" at <news://news.mozilla.org:119/[email protected]>.
These are just more examples of errors being asserted in a Gecko browser when the real problem are invalid sniffing for UA strings by Web servers. These problems are not new. Tracking bug #334967 for these problems was written on 21 Apr 2006. The earliest bug tracked by #334967 was bug #166261, written on 2 September 2002 and now closed. Novice users of SeaMonkey and other non-Firefox browsers that use Gecko are often confused about what sniffing and spoofing are. This was readily noticed in the two threads cited above, where one user repeatedly claimed that he could not be spoofing because he didn't even know what that meant. He very strongly stated that SeaMonkey 2.0 was broken but SeaMonkey 1.1.18 was not because he could view two web sites with the latter but not with the former. When instructed how to report his UA strings for both versions of SeaMonkey in mozilla.support.seamonkey, it was seen that his SeaMonkey 1.1.18 was spoofing Firefox 2.0.0.7. When he migrated to SeaMonkey 2.0, the user-set preference variable to continue such spoofing was not included. The problem is usually attributed to invalid sniffing for "Firefox" when Web servers should sniff for "Gecko". The real problem is that servers should not sniff at all. Interesting, informative, entertaining, aesthetically pleasing Web sites can be created that can be appropriately viewed by any modern browser without sniffing, providing those sites fully comply with the W3C specifications. To deal with this issue, I suggest the following: 1. Every detected instance of invalid sniffing must result in a bug report blocking bug #334967. Documenting the problem via Bugzilla makes it easier to communicate the problem to the Web site owner. 2. Today, much sniffing still excludes Opera, Safari, Konqueror, and Chrome let alone non-Firefox Gecko browsers. When dealing with a bug report tracked by bug #334967, Web site owners should be strongly urged not to sniff at all because sniffing is excluding potential audiences for their sites. 3. When helping users to defeat invalid sniffing, they should be advised to treat spoofing as a temporary measure. Permanent sniffing lends credence to assertions by Web developers that Firefox is the only Gecko browser visiting their sites and that no one uses SeaMonkey. Extensions such as PrefBar or User Agent Switcher should be recommended because they revert the UA string back to the browser's true UA when terminating or starting. Further, any spoofing must include the actual SeaMonkey UA string with "Firefox" mere added; this is required so that humans reviewing raw server logs will see that SeaMonkey is an actual browser visiting their Web sites. 4. Users must be urged to contact the site owner with a complaint about invalid sniffing, referring both to the bug report and to "Gecko is Gecko" at <http://wiki.mozilla.org/User:Sardisson/Gecko_is_Gecko>. 5. Management at both the Mozilla Foundation and the Mozilla Corporation should make similar contacts via postal mail with executives of the companies and agencies whose Web sites are causing problems. (Many executives are still more responsive to postal mail than to E-mail.) Such contacts to U.S. companies should mention that sniffing might yield Web sites that violate the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA); contacts with U.S. federal agencies should mention that sniffing might yield Web sites that violate Section 508 of the U.S. Rehabilitation Act of 1986 (as amended in 1998). 6. If any complaint (#4 or #5 above) results in a response that no one uses SeaMonkey, the responder should be asked to review the raw server logs to see if "SeaMonkey" appears among the UA strings (see #3 above). -- 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. _______________________________________________ support-seamonkey mailing list [email protected] https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/support-seamonkey
