1216275 - Facebook.com serves lower-res assets to Fennec and B2G than Chrome Mobile

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 1232091

(Web Compatibility :: Site Reports, defect)

Description

[Mike Taylor [:miketaylr]]

As mentioned in Bug 1216185, but also reported by email.

For whatever reason, they're just sending us smaller assets.

Here are details from the email that was sent to me:

~~~

If you take a look at e.g. https://m.facebook.com/Firefox and take a 
look at the preview thumbnails for the photos section, you'll see that 
in the screenshot made in Chrome, the pictures look slightly sharper.

Taking the Firefox logo as an example, the reason for that seems to be 
this: Chrome receives this picture:
https://fbcdn-photos-f-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-xfp1/v/t1.0-0/s180x540/10256578_10155928717700022_780866037250667516_n.jpg?oh=03d5205fd3006baf2267f1396e081f68&oe=56992E9B&__gda__=1452666442_bd805d17bfa6a29b534e370734032da7

while Firefox is sent this picture:
https://fbcdn-photos-f-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-xfp1/v/t1.0-0/p128x128/10256578_10155928717700022_780866037250667516_n.jpg?oh=998b4230d484edb22f5d59536df07385&oe=56867768&__gda__=1452700601_93ca942eb3b6ea2003407aba8fe6ced4

Both pictures are scaled down to 120x120 px on display, however 
Firefox's picture is only 128x128x px large to begin with, while 
Chrome's picture is 180x180 px. Because Facebook tends to compress their 
images to the limit (or even slightly beyond that :-)), the larger image 
scaled down by the browser looks a bit better than the smaller image 
scaled down by Facebook. (And of course, those 120 CSS/layout(?)-pixels 
end up as 180 screen pixels on my device anyway).

When clicking on the photo 
(https://m.facebook.com/Firefox/photos/pb.14696440021.-2207520000.1445079168./10155928717700022/?type=3&source=54&refid=17), 
I get a similar story:
Chrome gets this 400x400 px image:
https://scontent-fra3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xfp1/v/t1.0-9/10256578_10155928717700022_780866037250667516_n.jpg?oh=83a21c9952ce06e050599b10d024f5b9&oe=56CE8A5C

while Firefox only receives this 320x320px image:
https://fbcdn-photos-f-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-xfp1/v/t1.0-0/p320x320/10256578_10155928717700022_780866037250667516_n.jpg?oh=ff0e25904799e07fc9ea1cfc842dc548&oe=56C04D00&__gda__=1451831505_287bdef8f93b39eb16cc8f76fc13456c

In the end, both images are scaled to 320x320 px, so again the page 
tends to look slightly sharper in Chrome.

I've tested with my Samsung Galaxy S3 Mini (Android 4.1.2) with Firefox 
41.0.2 and Chrome 46.

Comment 1

[Mike Taylor [:miketaylr]]

Attachment: facebook image quality ff vs chrome.png

Comment 2

[Mike Taylor [:miketaylr]]

Hallvord, based on the description it seems like this is purely a UA string related thing (also in Bug 1216185). Would you mind taking a quick look to verify before we reach out to FB?

Comment 3

[Mike Taylor [:miketaylr]]

Ping Hallvord.

Comment 4

[Hallvord R. M. Steen [:hallvors]]

Related:

Navigation menu graphics - Firefox:
https://static.xx.fbcdn.net/rsrc.php/v2/yh/r/LIl-7AufgWi.png
Chrome:
https://static.xx.fbcdn.net/rsrc.php/v2/yZ/r/n7MO2mvFvi6.png

I can confirm that Firefox gets the hi-res graphics just by spoofing as Chrome. (However, the stuff they serve Chrome has quite different CSS and doesn't look good in Firefox at all.. Some webkit styling here?)

Comment 5

[Hallvord R. M. Steen [:hallvors]]

Harald, can you follow up with Facebook?

Comment 6

[Michael Ellis]

FXOS MP uses FB's hosted m.site for the FB application.  Is it possible FB is serving us lower res images to account for certain hardware limitations on our devices?  (Fb is Tarako enabled as well.)

Given the recent news about FXOS, we will unlikely be able to move the needle here by leveraging our Contacts at FB.

Comment 7

[Mike Taylor [:miketaylr]]

That's one possible explanation. Even with FxOS news, we would still like FB to send Fennec users the same hires assets that Chrome Mobile gets.

Comment 8

[bull500]

Will this be fixed soon? 
I guess even with the FxOS news, a huge population has to suffer a sub-par experience on Fennec on a popular website. 
If they need to try things out maybe filter nightly fennec users for the test?

Comment 9

[Karl Dubost💡 :karlcow]

Contacted Facebook by email.

Comment 10

[Karl Dubost💡 :karlcow]

Still not fixed. I sent a reminder.

Comment 11

[Mike Taylor [:miketaylr]]

I think we can close this as a dupe of 1232091.