92016 - virgin.com (music) - doesn't load because of bad sniff

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Tech Evangelism Graveyard :: English Other, defect, P1)

Description

[Blake Ross]

Nice of Virgin to sniff for browser.  Too bad they check for two things we don't
support, and offer nothing to fall back on.

6.1 PR1 user feedback:

Primary Browser: 	ie55  
Operating System: 	Win98  
Language: 		English
Issue Summary: 		couldn't view web page
Component: 		Navigator
Doing What: 		Browsing web pages  
Severity: 		SomethingDidNotWorkRight  
Can Reproduce: 		Always
Try this URL: 		http://www.virgin.com/net/music/
Issue Detail: 
Hello;
Browser wouldn't display this page.  It appeared
to load but then wasn't shown.  EI 5.5 had no
trouble with it.  Neither did Opera.

Comment 1

[Bob Clary [:bc] (inactive)]

All Evangelism Bugs are now in the Product Tech Evangelism. See bug 86997 for
details.

Comment 2

[Susie Wyshak]

To find the bad link:
1. pick any channel.
2. Click any "virgen .net" link

Changing the UA string to IE does not help.
I will email the webmaster.

Comment 3

[Bob Clary [:bc] (inactive)]

susiew, when you contact a site assign the bug to yourself, mark it assigned and
set the milestone for a month in the future so we can track who has been
contacted and when they need to be followed up.

Comment 4

[Bob Clary [:bc] (inactive)]

susiew contacted -> assigned/ms=april

Comment 5

[Susie Wyshak]

fixed; NEW URL: http://www.virgin.com/v2/index_cl.html

Comment 6

[Susie Wyshak]

reopening :-(

Click "virgen.net" on
http://www.virgin.com/redirect.html?content=/channel/entertainment/index.shtml
to see the problem.

Comment 7

[Susie Wyshak]

-->bclary

Bob could this be a redirect bug?

Comment 8

[Bob Clary [:bc] (inactive)]

nope.
http://www.virgin.com/net/internet/index.html has only IE and Nav4 forks:

<script>
var screenWidth
if (document.all){
	document.write('<frameset cols="*,0" border="0" frameborder="0" framespacing="0"
marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" >')
} else if (document.layers) {
	screenWidth = window.innerWidth + 10;
	document.write('<frameset cols="' + screenWidth + ',*" border="0" frameborder="0"
framespacing="0" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" >')
}
</script>

Comment 9

[Bob Clary [:bc] (inactive)]

I haven't dug too deeply into this site but I expect that this detection issue
is commonplace. virgin.com needs to write their javascript browser dependent
code fork so that browser other than IE and Nav4 are supported. 

The easiest is to use object detection as in:

if (document.getElementById) 
  // DOM compliant browsers (Gecko and IE5+)
else if (document.layers)
  // Nav4
else if (document.all)
  // IE4
else
  // everything else

If they need to distinguish Mozilla and other Gecko browsers they can use
navigator.product == 'Gecko' and if they need the build date they can use
navigator.productSub to return a string containing the build date in format
'CCYYMMDD'.

For the most part, they can code IE5/Gecko identically with respect DOM HTML
methods (document.getElementById, etc) and DOM Style (HTMLElement.style.left
etc). They can even share the same code with IE4 if they handle the fact that
IE4 does not support document.getElementById and needs document.all.

The major area where they need to keep Gecko on the same code fork as Nav4 is
with respect to event handling.

Comment 10

[Susie Wyshak]

Reset date to Aug.

Comment 11

[Bob Clary [:bc] (inactive)]

f