133411 - gamespot.com - bad browser sniffing/claims to only support IE

Status: RESOLVED INVALID

(Tech Evangelism Graveyard :: English US, defect)

Description

[Jonathan Wilson]

From Bugzilla Helper:
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Win 9x 4.90; en-US; rv:0.9.9) Gecko/20020311
BuildID:    2002031104

the gamespot live feature on westwood studios (and presumably other gamespot
live features) says that it requires Internet Explorer 5.0 or later, some
version of windows plus either windows media player or realplayer to play the
live features.
Clicking on the link to launch the player works and the page pops up and
displays. Viewing the source code to this page reveals that its using faulty
browser sniffing on that page to detect netscape 4 and IE and in both cases its
using browser specific stuff which doesnt work in mozilla.
Examining the source for the individual frames reveals a complicated looking
browser and OS sniffing routine. The results of that are used to determine which
style sheet to load.
Clicking on the player link (for real player) works & causes the player to
display no problems.
Examining the source code to the player page reveals that its using something
called document.vidioie to talk to the realplayer plugin. vidioie appears to be
the "name" of the <EMBED> tag that embeds the video.
There is also an <OBJECT> tag in there as well.

So, we have several problems with this page:
1.it says that it requires IE 5.0 or later which regardless of wether that is
true or not is something that should be evanglized (if it really does need IE,
something should be done so that it doesnt, if it doesnt need IE then it should
specify that it works with mozilla, I cant tell since for some reason the video
wont play but I dont know if thats because its using IE only stuff or because of
another reason)
2.its using busted browser sniffing in various places
and 3.it appears to be using IE only stuff in various places to do the playing
and stuff, even for the realplayer videos.


Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1.visit the URL given in the bug
2.folow the links through to play the realplayer video

Actual Results:  video doesnt play properly

Expected Results:  video should play

Comment 1

[Brant Gurganus]

I don't have the plugins to confirm.

Comment 2

[Brant Gurganus]

I have confirmed this error.  I get errors in the JavaScript Console:

Error: document.WMPlay.Play is not a function
Source File:
http://gamespot.com/gamespot/gslive/westwood/player-javascript.html?filename=sound&format=asx&speed=56
Line: 270

I am updating the OS to reflect that this happened with build 2002050708 on
Windows XP Home Edition.

Comment 3

[Bob Clary [:bc] (inactive)]

->evang500

Comment 4

[Doron Rosenberg (IBM)]

windows media player does not support scripting, so that is hte js error.  real
works fine... not really evangelism

Comment 5

[Doron Rosenberg (IBM)]

real player works, old site.