Closed Bug 160832 Opened 22 years ago Closed 16 years ago

mcc.co.il - site blocks mozilla

Categories

(Tech Evangelism Graveyard :: Hebrew, defect, P1)

Product:
Tech Evangelism Graveyard
Component:
Hebrew
Type:
defect

Tracking

(Not tracked)

Status:
RESOLVED FIXED

People

(Reporter: tsahi_75, Unassigned)

References

(
URL
)

Details

(Whiteboard: [deny] [contacted] - see comment #6)

the site http://www.mcc.co.il blocks access to mozilla browsers. the site is an online shop that serves members of "Hever", a consumers club that includes officers and NCO's of the IDF - in active service and retired, civilians working in the army, workers and retired of other security agencies, disabled people following service, and their families.
Severity: normal → critical
Status: UNCONFIRMED → NEW
Ever confirmed: true
OS: Windows 98 → All
Priority: -- → P1
Hardware: PC → All
Summary: site blocks mozilla → mcc.co.il - site blocks mozilla
Whiteboard: [deny]
Contact info: phone: 972 (0)3-6122877 fax: 972 (0)3 6122865 email: mailto:psupport@mcc.co.il
server down?
no.
tech evang june 2003 reorg
Assignee: momoi → hebrew
Component: Middle Eastern → Hebrew
QA Contact: xslf → hebrew
emailed the above address. Attempted to fax- the fax was busy.
Status: NEW → ASSIGNED
OK, just got a phone call from a person who identified as the technology adviser to Hever. He started by telling me that the letter I sent is rude and unreasnble. We talked for a while- he remembers the "bad old days" there Netscape did not support anything but "visual Hebrew", and refuses to accept that Netscape/Mozilla has now changed. He claimed that about a year ago, someone who was using Netscpae (he did not mention a version number), used a bidi display bug to sue them to get a car for much less then the price listed at the site (the claim was that the price appred reversed). According to him, after the incident, they decided to standerdize on ie, to prevent more claims. I suggested to them that they might want to consider to standerdise to the w3c standard, but he refused as he said that he was in the past part of Israel's standrads instetute (mechon hatekanim), he knows his stuff, and the w3c does not keep up with the time, while Netscape was too slow (he mentioned that back in 94 the state of Israel came to Ms and NS to ask for a proper Hebrew browser, and while ms added hebrew support to ie3, ns refused). Finally, he said that to copensate for the fact that mozilla users do not know thier browser well enough, he will add to the blocking page directions how to mask mozilla as IE, so we can not claim that he blocks us.
The site works just fine with Mozilla (when spoofed as IE6). I don't see the logic in turning customers away, but that's for the site management to decide. If they don't want our money, so be it. It all goes down to service, and if a store blatantly turns its back on customers, I (as a potential customer) know better than to conduct any business with it. As for Netscape 3 limitations, it is very like discussing the limitations of Windows 3 -> completely irrelevant to Mozilla and other Gecko-based browsers, they all include good BiDi support, and for a long time. Prog.
Whiteboard: [deny] → [deny] [contacted] - see comment #6
One year later, and no improvement: http://www.mcc.co.il/netscape.html for those who can read it.
Has anyone noticed the new instructions for Firefox users? Basically they tell you to manually change the useragent string to "msie" "Here's a great idea - out visitors should change their useragent string... that's M-U-C-H better than updating our broken and useless browser sniffing script!" :) Seriously, that's just BAD people might actually do this...
(In reply to comment #9) > Has anyone noticed the new instructions for Firefox users? > Basically they tell you to manually change the useragent string to "msie" Well, they said that they will do that after my phone call to them (see comment #6). It just took them a few years to implement this :-p
i sent them an email, saying that spoofing the user agent like that may damage people when they access other web sites. instead, i wrote, they should fix their agent sniffer. they didn't reply as of yet.
A year later, followup on mcc.co.il. No chnage it seems with this report we got today. http://linmagazine.co.il/hacking/hever-w3c-compliance-32930
September 2007 - Blocking removed. Site usable. http://tomer.blogli.co.il/archives/212
marking fixed, blocking removed
Status: ASSIGNED → RESOLVED
Closed: 16 years ago
Resolution: --- → FIXED
Product: Tech Evangelism → Tech Evangelism Graveyard
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