1898899 - pge.com - Firefox appears as unsupported in their list

Status: NEW

(Web Compatibility :: Site Reports, defect, P3)

Description

[Ksenia Berezina [:ksenia] on leave until 09/15]

Environment:
Operating system: Mac OS X 10.15
Originally reported Firefox version: Firefox 122.0
Last reproduced with the following UA: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 13.4; rv:126.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/126.0

Steps to reproduce:
The site gave me a warning that I was using an unsupported browser and recommended that I switch to a supported browser and linked to a page of supported browsers (with a tab listing unsupported browser) https://www.pge.com/en/accessibility/supported-browsers.html
Otherwise the site functioned ok so this seems like a site that should be fixed to not unrecommend Firefox.
Ideally the site

Actual Behavior:
Site says Mozilla Firefox is an Unsupported browser https://www.pge.com/en/accessibility/supported-browsers.html

Created from https://github.com/webcompat/web-bugs/issues/133142

Comment 2

[Daniel Holbert [:dholbert]]

Attachment: screenshot of prominent "Your browser is unsupported." popup

Note: if you visit https://www.pge.com/ (note www. prefix, not m. prefix) in Firefox on Android, you get a prominent popup saying:

Your browser is unsupported
Please use a different browser

... that you have to dismiss in order to use the site. This is pretty severe and perhaps merits an intervention of some sort to prevent users tripping over this. (I can attest that the site works just fine; I use it myself in Firefox on my phone and desktop, and haven't hit any trouble.)

The popup can also be reproduced on Desktop in RDM if you use a Firefox-for-Android-UA-string, too. PG&E might save some state to avoid nagging you repeatedly, but I can reproduce this popup reliably in a fresh profile, or when I clear history, or visit the site in Private Browsing Mode.

Comment 3

[Daniel Holbert [:dholbert]]

Attachment: screenshot

PG&E's website has gotten a bit more aggressive on this, on desktop:

• When going to https://www.pge.com/ and clicking "Sign in" (which takes me to https://m.pge.com ):
  I get a prominent popup covering up the sign-in form which says "Your browser is unsupported." I can dismiss it with an "x", but it comes back when I reload the sign-in page.
• At the top of the page: there's a message saying "For the best experience, use a supported browser and turn off pop-up blockers. The Firefox and Brave browsers are not supported. "

Comment 4

[ska1]

They flipped the switch now, and went to full block mode. You can't ignore the popup. So this has to be fixed. User agent switcher doesn't help as it appears they are using user agent client hints to detect.

Comment 5

[Daniel Holbert [:dholbert]]

The modal popup shown in comment 3 is shown using the magic Firefox-only @-moz-document() CSS, to make it specifically appear for Firefox, regardless of user agent string:

            #unsupportedbrowser, #hideunsupported
            {
                display:none; 
            } 
[...]
            /* Firefox Browser Styles */
            @-moz-document url-prefix()
            {
            #unsupportedbrowser
            {
                display:block !important;
            }            
        }

This would work to override that, as an intervention for https://m.pge.com/ :

#unsupportedbrowser { display: none !important }

Comment 6

[Daniel Holbert [:dholbert]]

There's a separate issue where the https://m.pge.com/ login page seems to be entirely blank aside from this dialog and the cookie-footer, some of the time (which looks to be due to some sort of race condition perhaps, at some level in our or their code). That's tracked in bug 1915573. (I just posted a screencast and some initial diagnosis over there.)

Comment 7

[Daniel Holbert [:dholbert]]

(In reply to Daniel Holbert [:dholbert] from comment #5)

This would work to override that, as an intervention for https://m.pge.com/ [...]

PG&E is apparently also about to launch a redesign of their website ( some details on https://pge.com/en/featured/new-pge-account.html -- and based on an email I received as an account-holder, Nov 11th is some sort of deadline/cut-over date). So it's probably not worth shipping any interventions at this point. Once the new site has launched, we can see what issues (if any) we might run into with it.

Comment 8

[Bryce Mozilla Nesbitt]

PGE web support at 1-877-660-6789
is aware of the issue, but so far says they don't care. Call 'em!

Comment 9

[Daniel Holbert [:dholbert]]

See comment 7; as noted there, PG&E is about to launch some sort of massive redesign; given that, they're unlikely to be receptive to suggestions-to-change their currently-deployed "legacy" site, which they'll presumably be abandoning as soon as they can. As such, outreach to them right now would probably be wasted effort. We can do outreach as-needed after their redesign launches, depending on what issues (if any) surface at that point.

Comment 10

[Bryce Mozilla Nesbitt]

They've ramped up their blocking of firefox, presumably in preparation for the big refresh.

Comment 11

[Daniel Holbert [:dholbert]]

The modal-popup issue in comment 3 doesn't happen anymore, for what it's worth. Their website doesn't look substantially different aside from that (and they still list Firefox as unsupported, but don't seem to explicitly take action to block us). Not sure if their new experience (comment 7) has launched yet or not.

Comment 12

[Andrew Overholt [:overholt]]

Attachment: Screen Shot 2024-12-06 at 1.46.50 PM.png

I'm told this is what the new popup looks like (I couldn't reproduce but I don't know the signin flow that gets you to this).

Maybe we should consider an intervention?

Comment 13

[Daniel Holbert [:dholbert]]

Attachment: html for popup in comment 12

(In reply to Andrew Overholt [:overholt] from comment #12)

I'm told this is what the new popup looks like (I couldn't reproduce but I don't know the signin flow that gets you to this).

I can't reproduce on Linux (and I assume you were testing-and-unable-to-repro on macOS).

However, I am able to reproduce in Firefox release version on Windows via BrowserStack, on the first load of https://www.pge.com -- not sure if I just got lucky there vs. if they're targeting this popup in a Windows-specific way for whatever reason.

I'm attaching the CSS/HTML for the DOM snippet that renders as the popup shown in comment 12's screenshot (rooted at an element with id "targetModal"). That element does not seem to exist in the DOM at all in other browsers/configs that I've tested (Chrome-on-Linux and Firefox-on-Linux), so they seem to be inserting/appending it in a browser-specific way, unlike comment 3 / comment 5 which was being selectively shown via a Firefox-specific CSS rule.

Comment 14

[Daniel Holbert [:dholbert]]

(In reply to Andrew Overholt [:overholt] from comment #12)

Maybe we should consider an intervention?

I'd previously suggesting holding off on that because there was a site redesign that was supposedly days-or-weeks away from deploying, which meant that the site content might radically change as soon as we deployed our intervention. An archive.org snapshot from August 2024 shows "This fall, we’re launching a new online account [...]"

However, that timeline has apparently been pushed back by ~half a year to "Spring 2025" based on https://www.pge.com/en/featured/new-pge-account.html which now says "a new pge.com account is coming in Spring 2025"

So, in light of that, yes, it's probably worth deploying an intervention here, if/when we can come up with one. I don' t have one to suggest yet but +CC :twisniewski who may be able to help with discovering and/or shipping an effective intervention here.

Note, that new-pge-account page also has one other clue there about why they might be aggressively showing a banner about Firefox/Brave being unsupported:

...you will only be asked to use MFA [...] If too much time passes between logins

If you're using a browser with extra security controls like Firefox or Brave, you may need to use MFA every time you log in. Some browsers prevent us from saving your information.

So it's possible they're hitting some 3rd-party-cookie or tracking-protection issue that prevents them from saving the cookie that they use to recognize you as a previously-authenticated user.

Comment 15

[Jeff Muizelaar [:jrmuizel]]

Here's the code for the modal warning:

setTimeout(function(){ 
    document.getElementsByTagName("body")[0].insertAdjacentHTML("afterend",
    '<div id="targetModal" class="modal" style="display:none;position:fixed;z-index:999999;padding-top:150px;left:0;top:0;width:100%;height:100%;overflow:auto;background-color: rgb(0,0,0);background-color: rgba(0,0,0,0.4);"><div class="modal-content" style="  position: relative;background-color: #fefefe;margin: auto;padding: 0;border: 1px solid #888; width: 80%;box-shadow: 0 4px 8px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.2),0 6px 20px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.19);"><div class="modal-header" style="padding: 2px 16px;color:#000;"><span id="targetModalClose" class="close" style="float: right;font-size: 28px;font-weight: bold;cursor: pointer;">&times;</span></div><div class="modal-body cmp-text" style="padding:20px;color:#1b1c1d;"><h5>Sorry! pge.com doesn’t support your web browser.</h5><br/><p>For the best experience, we recommend using one of the browsers found on <a id="supportedBrowser" target="_blank" href="https://www.pge.com/supported-browsers">pge.com/supported-browsers</a>.</p><br/></div></div></div>');        
    var modal = document.getElementById("targetModal");
    modal.style.display = "block";
    var span = document.getElementById("targetModalClose");
    span.onclick = function() {
      modal.style.display = "none";
    }
    window.onclick = function(event) {
      if (event.target == modal) {
        modal.style.display = "none";
      }
    }
},1000);

Comment 17

[Bryce Mozilla Nesbitt]

I'd previously suggesting holding off on that because there was a site redesign that was supposedly days-or-weeks away from deploying

The only time PG&E might be receptive to input, is likely before the site deploys.
Or, maybe in the initial debug cycle after. There's likely a contractor involved as well.

Comment 18

[Daniel Holbert [:dholbert]]

(To clarify, the comment you're quoting from comment 14 had nothing to do with sending input to PG&E. I was talking about pros/cons of shipping an intervention, i.e. a special bit of code that we write to change the behavior of the site, e.g. to hide the annoying modal in this case. My previous "holding off" stance was simply pointing out that it's not worth spending time on that sort of thing if the website's about to change out from under us as soon as we ship the intervention.)

Comment 19

[George R. Goffe]

Howdy,

My intent in filing "my" bug report 1939057 was to alert the FF folks to a problem that PG&E MIGHT be having with something in FF which MIGHT be causing them problems.

I have tried several other browsers (on my Fedora Core 42 x86_64 system), palemoon, symphony, chrome, seamonkey, and found ONLY chrome works. I suspect that there are other browsers that "fail" as well. Sigh.

It doesn't make sense for them to alienate customers like this BUT, they're the only show in town and can do whatever they want. I did file a complaint with the PUC and they forwarded it to PG&E. I got a call from them stating that they were NOT going to change their position; no reason was given. Argh! Hmmm. Chrome? Is the world polluted by Microsoft? I bet I.E., works? Makes me think about "Constraint of fair trade) but that's just me. Sorry to wax opinionated.

Best regards and THANKS for all the effor you folks put into this problem,

George...

Comment 20

[Bryce Mozilla Nesbitt]

Well, the PG&E situation is better than Accela which supplies building permit software to many cities:
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1941483
The PG&E website mostly works if you ignore the nasty no Firefox rule. The building permit software assuredly does NOT work with Firefox, and has not for many years.

They can do whatever they want. I'm forced to use MS Edge mostly to file building permits.