1124791 - Some web sites do not properly recognise the user agent string even if Advertise Firefox Compatibility is enabled

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Web Compatibility :: Site Reports, defect)

Description

[Arthur K. (he/him)]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:35.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/35.0 SeaMonkey/2.32
Build ID: 20150112201917

Steps to reproduce:

I visited https://www-us.computershare.com/Investor/


Actual results:

It said my browser was out of date or not supported.


Expected results:

It should have seen the User Agent String as Gecko/20100101 Firefox/35.0 and not complained. Perhaps it would be better to simply omit the secondary SeaMonkey/2.32 User Agent String when the Advertise Firefox Compatibility radio button is checked?

Comment 1

[therube]

Don't know there's anything to be done on our end, particularly.
You could spoof the UA, setting it to an expected FF UA, no mention of SeaMonkey.
Might work.

general.useragent.override;Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; rv:35.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/35.0

Best thing to do is to get the sites in question to properly "sniff", or don't sniff at all, so the issue doesn't come up at all.

But then if Bank of America fails in that regard, which it does, what can you expect?
https://www.bankofamerica.com/
But then if you don't try...

Oh, if nothing else, suppose this should be Tech Evangelism or something like that (if such a thing exists for SeaMonkey).

Comment 2

[rsx11m]

Yeah, there isn't really much beyond the existing compatibility token that can be done, that's the obligation of the website to do it reasonably right. Hence, moving to Tech Evangelism as suggested.

Comment 3

[Karl Dubost💡 :karlcow]

The culprit is in 
https://cda.computershare.com/Combres/IC-Std-Js/4.4?culture=en-US&b=21

function getBrowser()

it identifies seamonkey and considers it's not good enough.

      if (/bot|googlebot|facebook|slurp|wii|silk|blackberry|maxthon|maxton|mediapartners|dolfin|dolphin|adsbot|silk|android|phone|bingbot|google web preview|like firefox|chromeframe|seamonkey|opera mini|min|meego|netfront|moblin|maemo|arora|camino|flot|k-meleon|fennec|kazehakase|galeon|android|mobile|iphone|ipod|ipad|epiphany|rekonq|symbian|webos/i.test(d)) {

which sets e='x'

There's a line a bit later which is
                  if (/Firefox.(\d+\.\d+)/i.test(d)) {

that will be never seen.



You might want to try to contact 
https://twitter.com/JohnKasra
https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnoliver

Maybe he will get you on the right track for the contact. Good luck.

Comment 4

[Arthur K. (he/him)]

(In reply to Karl Dubost :karlcow from comment #3)
> The culprit is in 
> https://cda.computershare.com/Combres/IC-Std-Js/4.4?culture=en-US&b=21
> 
> function getBrowser()
> 
> it identifies seamonkey and considers it's not good enough.
> 
>       if
> (/
> bot|googlebot|facebook|slurp|wii|silk|blackberry|maxthon|maxton|mediapartners
> |dolfin|dolphin|adsbot|silk|android|phone|bingbot|google web preview|like
> firefox|chromeframe|seamonkey|opera
> mini|min|meego|netfront|moblin|maemo|arora|camino|flot|k-
> meleon|fennec|kazehakase|galeon|android|mobile|iphone|ipod|ipad|epiphany|reko
> nq|symbian|webos/i.test(d)) {
> 
> which sets e='x'
> 
> There's a line a bit later which is
>                   if (/Firefox.(\d+\.\d+)/i.test(d)) {
> 
> that will be never seen.
> 
> 
> 
> You might want to try to contact 
> https://twitter.com/JohnKasra
> https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnoliver
> 
> Maybe he will get you on the right track for the contact. Good luck.

I'm going to try and reach out to John Oliver via Computershare and if he replies, see if I can get his input. Hang tight in the meantime.

Comment 5

[Arthur K. (he/him)]

(In reply to Karl Dubost :karlcow from comment #3)
> The culprit is in 
> https://cda.computershare.com/Combres/IC-Std-Js/4.4?culture=en-US&b=21
> 
> function getBrowser()
> 
> it identifies seamonkey and considers it's not good enough.
> 
>       if
> (/
> bot|googlebot|facebook|slurp|wii|silk|blackberry|maxthon|maxton|mediapartners
> |dolfin|dolphin|adsbot|silk|android|phone|bingbot|google web preview|like
> firefox|chromeframe|seamonkey|opera
> mini|min|meego|netfront|moblin|maemo|arora|camino|flot|k-
> meleon|fennec|kazehakase|galeon|android|mobile|iphone|ipod|ipad|epiphany|reko
> nq|symbian|webos/i.test(d)) {
> 
> which sets e='x'
> 
> There's a line a bit later which is
>                   if (/Firefox.(\d+\.\d+)/i.test(d)) {
> 
> that will be never seen.
> 
> 
> 
> You might want to try to contact 
> https://twitter.com/JohnKasra
> https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnoliver
> 
> Maybe he will get you on the right track for the contact. Good luck.

I managed to get hold of the mysterious John Oliver at Computershare but he tells me he's actually not behind that suspect code but is going to ask and see if he can get to the bottom of who is. He is also curious as to how his name came up with respect to this code. Would you be able to share that info?

Comment 6

[Karl Dubost💡 :karlcow]

Hi Arthur, 

thanks for helping. Very useful.
And thanks a lot to John!

(In reply to Arthur K. from comment #5)
> He is also curious as to how his
> name came up with respect to this code. Would you be able to share that info?

Hehe. Very simple. Not related to this code, but to working at computershare
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=%22web+developer%22+computershare+site%3Alinkedin.com%2Fin

The goal often is to find someone working in Web development inside the company. The reason for that is that *unfortunately* most of the social manager or issues reporting form have people who do not understand at all the technical issue which often disappears in a black hole. The most effective way is indeed to try to bypass the filter of social media/community manager.

linkedin is one of the ways to find information. People at conferences, speakers, github, or just twitter profile is another way. I wish they were a more formal channel to do that. It might something we need to discuss at the Web Compatibility Summit in February.
https://wiki.mozilla.org/WebCompat_Summit_%282015%29

There are other techniques, see https://webcompat.com/contributors

Comment 7

[Arthur K. (he/him)]

I finally received a reply from a Product Manager at Computershare and seeing where things go from there.

Comment 8

[Arthur K. (he/him)]

Well, the official response was "Yes we have looked at the bug report. We’ll add this to our product backlog to address in the future." So whether it gets fixed or not is anyone's guess. WF because it's them, not us.