117312 - msnbc - does not show dhtml menus for mozilla, does for ns6

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Tech Evangelism Graveyard :: English US, defect)

Description

[Jay Davis]

From Bugzilla Helper:
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:0.9.7+)
Gecko/20011228
BuildID:    2001122803

The pop-up menus are not working for many builds now.  This was happening last
month as well.

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1.Go to any MSNBC website
2.Put cursor over the topics in the menu in the upper left.
3.Try the same with IE6 and watch the popup menus work properly.

Comment 1

[David Illsley]

Yep, I see this as well, Win2k 20011221. Is this just TechEvang?
TechEvang msnbc meta-bug is bug 87471

Comment 2

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

Are there relevant errors in the JS console?  (Clear the console then mouse over 
the thing that should give you a pop-up menu).

Comment 3

[Oliver Klee]

Over to Tech Evangelism.

Comment 4

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

Oliver, why did you reassign this to Evang?  There is nothing so far in this bug 
to suggest that this is an Evang issue.... if you saw something to suggest this, 
please comment in the bug?

Comment 5

[Oliver Klee]

In http://stacks.msnbc.com/tools/nm/nmjs02.js, they do some browser sniffing for
"MSIE" and "Netscape":

var sUa=window.navigator.userAgent, icIE=sUa.indexOf('MSIE'),
icNN=sUa.indexOf('Netscape');

I don't see any pop-up menus, though. I just see some onmouseover-highlighting
for the menu at the left when I'm using IE5 (or Opera disguised as IE5). Mozilla
or Opera without disguise don't work.

Comment 6

[Doron Rosenberg (IBM)]

sUa=window.navigator.userAgent;
icNN=sUa.indexOf('Netscape');

Since there is no "Netscape" in the mozilla userAgent, it fails. It does work
for ns6 though, so this is a simple sniffing issue

Comment 7

[hhwong]

Quick FYI. Here's what happens when you try to download the news menu. It gives
you the following message:

News Menu

News Menu cannot be installed.

At this time, News Menu does not support the new Netscape 6 browser.

• Try install again.

• Go to the MSNBC homepage.

The URL of this message: http://www.msnbc.com/tools/nm/nm9er.asp?c=N&e=g

Since this worked in previous builds, I'm guessing MS is up to its usual
tactics. Strange though that people are finding it to work with NS6 when the
above message states that it doesn't.

Comment 8

[Markus Hübner]

shouldn't this be fixed now?

Comment 9

[Susie Wyshak]

They're aware of this and i have sent them sniffing info as well. 

Comment 10

[Bob Clary [:bc] (inactive)]

*** Bug 164485 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 11

[Jay Davis]

I have an interesting twist to this bug.  Turns out the dhtml menus are
perfectly workable when the site is spoofed with Uabar (useragent bar).  So this
site use to work with Mozilla, and now hasn't worked for months obviously
because of Microsoft shutting it down to Mozilla users.  Now just like that I
realize it can be worked around.  I tried another Microsoft site, their Help and
Support site and it makes it appear exactly as it should now.  However,
microsoft.com does not fully work.

Comment 12

[Jay Davis]

Great, I just had to do a reinstall and I lost whatever little file allowed
those popup menus on the Microsoft sites. :-(  This was something I only wanted
to work for months now.  I don't know how to get it back either.  I have my
Plugins folder totally the same with everything included, so it must have been
stored in the Profile menu located in Documents & Settings.  Of course I loaded
Uabar and set it properly.  Maybe the file can be downloaded from the Microsoft
site somewhere but I am not sure it would download with this browser now.  It
also could be preference related in my prefs.js which I trashed and of which I
have no backup.  I am virtually sure it's not just an on and off thing that
works....it was working very reliably and now it won't at all.
   Someone who'd like to score a point against Microsoft, please help me get
this working again since they clearly turned it off to Mozilla browsers a long
time ago.

Comment 13

[Susie Wyshak]

Go to http://uabar.mozdev.org/source.html
Click Install xpi here
Restart your browser and pick Netscape 6 as the user agent string.

Then MSNBC will work. 

Comment 14

[Susie Wyshak]

FYI your finding was not a twist to this bug, it just displayed this bug, that
they need to update their browser detection, which they are working on.

Comment 15

[Jay Davis]

Hi Susie,

Thanks for your reply.  I had UAbar installed already, but I tried a reinstall.
 And I set my useragent string for netscape 6 and also tried my usual Windows XP
under which it had worked fine before.  Nope, it turns out I'm missing something
else here after that reinstall I did.  I simply cannot get this thing working. 
I tried a download from the Newstools site at MSNBC with Netscape 4 and I got
npwrap.dll in my Plugins folder from doing that.  But moving that over into
Mozilla plugins folder didn't help.  So...I'm at a loss here. :-(  It's got to
be file based.

Comment 16

[Jay Davis]

Btw, I am quite surprised that Microsoft was trying to make this work.  I
thought it had been disabled sometime back by them because they didn't want to
support other browsers just as they did when they shut down the Moneycentral
deluxe stock charting capabilities.

Comment 17

[Susie Wyshak]

Um, that's probably a different evangelism issue related to plugins. If so I
will open a separate bug and cc you.

Comment 18

[Jay Davis]

Like I said, "they shut down the Moneycentral
deluxe stock charting capabilities."  They announced that you'd no longer be
able to use anything but IE on this.

Do you have any idea how I can get a fix right now for these popup menus which
may or may not have been intentionally made more difficult by them now?

Comment 19

[Susie Wyshak]

Yes, use Netscape 6.x. Other than that, sorry I don't know what to tell you. I
will look at the other issues you mentioned.

Comment 20

[Olivier Cahagne]

*** Bug 169441 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 21

[Bob Clary [:bc] (inactive)]

fixed. wfm in ns7 and 930 trunk on win2k. 
layout issues still outstanding.

Comment 22

[Bob Clary [:bc] (inactive)]

*** Bug 141445 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***