185767 - eboks.dk - serverside identification busted

Status: VERIFIED FIXED

(Tech Evangelism Graveyard :: Danish, defect)

Description

[Bjarne D Mathiesen]

identifies Mozilla as Netscape 4.x

try spoofing Mozilla as MSIE and see the difference

Comment 1

[Brant Gurganus]

I am guessing that this is a platform parity bug (only happens on Macintosh),
because the site looks the same for me in both Internet Explorer 6 SP1 and
Mozilla 2002121408.  That is without spoofing USERAGENT strings.

Comment 2

[Bjarne D Mathiesen]

http://www.dr.dk/orientering/ark0250.htm (bottom of page - last paragraph)
http://www.dr.dk/DR-nyheder/orientering/ram/m021209b.ram (in danish)

8:34 debate about Open Source and Microsoft in the public sector
from 7:00 they are debating eboks
Jon Johnsen from Kommunedata states that they are using w3 standards, that the
problem is that not every browser supports the standards, and that as soon as
every browser supports the standards, every citizen will be able to use eboks.

Then, why doesn't Mozilla work ???

Comment 3

[Bjarne D Mathiesen]

I've had a look at their client-side browser detection:

var ss_ns5up=((navigator.userAgent.toLowerCase().indexOf('mozilla')!=-1) &&
(parseInt(navigator.appVersion)>=5));

!BUT! as far as I can see they have an error in their script a little further down:

function feedback(){ if (ss_NS4|ss_IE4|ss_ns5up){

now, if I'm not mistanken the logical clause ought to have been:
if (ss_NS4 || ss_IE4 || ss_ns5up)

In my own experienced with Mozilla, an error anywhere in a script leads to none
of it being executed; thus, the client-side browser-detection isn't executed and
they fall back on serverside detection
   
   

Comment 4

[Bjarne D Mathiesen]

<META NAME="Generator" CONTENT="Web500 CMS">
I'm guessing this identifies the serverside system.
A google system revealed: http://www.web500.com/

<META NAME="Owner" CONTENT="[e-mail]">
<META NAME="Author" CONTENT="e-Boks webmaster">
I'm guessing this ought to be the contact-person

Comment 5

[Brant Gurganus]

Not working for me now.

Comment 6

[Bjarne D Mathiesen]

Attachment: screenshot showing frontpage

user agent used:
Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X Mach-O; da-DK; rv:1.3b; MultiZilla
v1.1.33 (a)) Gecko/20021223

Comment 7

[Bjarne D Mathiesen]

Attachment: screenshot showing frontpage

user agent used :
Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1)

Comment 8

[Bjarne D Mathiesen]

Attachment: screenshot of frontpage

this is a screenshot of the frontpage with user agent spoofing to MSIE 6 and
making sure no cookies were present before entering the website

Comment 9

[Bjarne D Mathiesen]

phoned them.
gave the reception the URL for this page as well as my private phone number.

Comment 10

[Bjarne D Mathiesen]

2003-01-15 :
phoned them again and got in contact with somebody knowledable.
seems af if my message left with the reception got lost
promised to send details of problem by email, which I did

2003-01-29 :
got an email reply, that it ought to have been fixed.
checking revealed:
1) serverside detection fixed :-))))
2) JavaScript error still persists :-(
I've emailed back about the still persistent JavaScript problem and appreciated
my thanks for fixing the browser detection.

Comment 11

[Bjarne D Mathiesen]

taking. I've got the communication going with the developers

Comment 12

[Bjarne D Mathiesen]

They've fixed the JavaScript issue too now :-)
Resolving as fixed :-)

Comment 13

[Brant Gurganus]

v

Comment 14

[Bob Clary [:bc] (inactive)]

resolved euro west non-.com url bugs to other