1026317 - Please ask Facebook/Twitter to point the Tarako UA to their "low-fi" version of their webpages.

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Tech Evangelism Graveyard :: Preinstalled B2G Apps, defect)

Description

[Naoki Hirata :nhirata (please use needinfo instead of cc)]

To continue the discussion from bug 1007019:

Tarako has a UA : Mozilla/5.0 (Mobile; rv:28.1) Gecko/28.1 Firefox/28.1
( see bug 1006830 ) 

1) We would like Facebook/Twitter use the above UA to send the "Lo-fi" version of their webpages because of the amount of memory it saves ( see https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1007019#c80 )  

2) we would need to follow up with a bug following this one to revert the UA override change in bug 1007019 for facebook and bug 1024783 for twitter.

Comment 1

[Mike Taylor [:miketaylr]]

AFAIK, Facebook uses WURFL so we should be in touch with them about "28.1 is Tarako" bit (and probably all the other device detection frameworks we have contacts with).

Comment 2

[Karl Dubost💡 :karlcow]

Starting a discussion here too about low memory devices, high capabilities in screen.
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/mozilla.compatibility/S9NyfymRYZw

Comment 3

[Karl Dubost💡 :karlcow]

To read Bug 1007019#c75 and 1007019#c80 where the idea for using the low-fi version of Facebook started.

Instead of asking more fingerprinting based on UA sniffing. I wonder if we can do UA override for Tarako devices only. Basically, our dynamic user agent override list could be different for Tarako. 

If we ask Facebook and others to change the UA sniffing, it means:

1. Changing their own framework

2. Waiting for the changes to be baked in the framework they used (WURFL). It also means that if we have to contact, every single framework and modify libraries, (apart of the credibility issue) these changes will not be available for a while.

3. Having devices in the wild which will be identified as lowfi by other sites in the future with all the consequences of crappy experiences (Companies will not test if the shiny sites is working, they will check how Tarako is classified in the framework, see lowfi and send a crappy version instead of the shiny version.)

I'm wondering if there is in fact a good opportunity for Facebook developer to optimize their code so it is working without crashing. Same thing for twitter. It's a good issue/project to have.

Asking for low-fi version of Web sites is underwhelming. I could see some bad comments such as "Tarako the device which looks like a smartphone but works like a feature phone." Not cool for the brand either.

Comment 4

[Thomas Elin [:relaas]]

We've approached FB with the unique UA for Tarako ( Mozilla/5.0 (Mobile; rv:28.1) Gecko/28.1 Firefox/28.1). We expect this to be incorporated by FB without issue but do not have an ETA.

Will update as I know more.

Comment 5

[Karl Dubost💡 :karlcow]

(In reply to thomas elin from comment #4)
> We've approached FB with the unique UA for Tarako ( Mozilla/5.0 (Mobile;
> rv:28.1) Gecko/28.1 Firefox/28.1). We expect this to be incorporated by FB
> without issue but do not have an ETA.

Thomas, who is your contact at Facebook?
And how do they plan to incorporate the UA sniffing (as they are using WURFL).

Comment 6

[Thomas Elin [:relaas]]

(In reply to Karl Dubost :karlcow from comment #5)
> (In reply to thomas elin from comment #4)
> > We've approached FB with the unique UA for Tarako ( Mozilla/5.0 (Mobile;
> > rv:28.1) Gecko/28.1 Firefox/28.1). We expect this to be incorporated by FB
> > without issue but do not have an ETA.
> 
> Thomas, who is your contact at Facebook?
> And how do they plan to incorporate the UA sniffing (as they are using
> WURFL).

The low res version does not use WURFL

Comment 7

[:Harald Kirschner :digitarald]

Twitter confirmed that the new user agent is deployed.

I verified on Desktop using a UA override and it serves the low-fi version correctly for the 28.1 UA.

Comment 8

[Michael Ellis]

Facebook currently serves the low-fi version of their site to the Tarako device.  Closing this bug.