242308 - fidelity.com - bad browser sniffing (checks for Win/Mac, breaks with Linux)

Status: RESOLVED INCOMPLETE

(Tech Evangelism Graveyard :: English US, defect)

Description

[[e-mail]]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.7b) Gecko/20040421
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.7b) Gecko/20040421

Pages on fidelity.com only support IE and Netscape and will not work on Mozilla
because of a browser detection Javascript routine.

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1. Go to http://personal.fidelity.com/research/funds/
2. Click "browse Fidelity funds"
3. Click on a fund category
4. Click on a fund name.
5. Get directed to a page telling you the browser isn't supported.

If you view the source of this page, you can see the javascript code that checks
the browser.  Technically, it does what they claim, since they only claim to
support Windows browsers and don't say that they support Mozilla.  However,
since they do seem willing to support Netscape 7, I would guess that they would
be amenable to putting Gecko in there too.  But they'll need to be told by
someone who they're willing to listen to more than a random user.

I could not figure out how to set my user-agent string to get around this
(general.useragent.override, but set to what?  Does that even affect appversion
at all?).

If I run a proxy that rewrites the Javascript on the page to force the browser
to be supported, the page appears to work (not unexpected since they support
Netscape 7).
Actual Results:  
Got a page saying the browser isn't supported.

Expected Results:  
The software should have worked the same, but the page should have allowed
Mozilla.  (Why is it that the 'enter a bug' page for evangelism asks what the
software should have done instead?)

Comment 1

[Frederic Bezies]

Confirming this bug.

Here is the faulty JS :

<script language="javascript">
<!-- begin hiding
// The user must have NN4+ or IE4+ in order to make the most of this navbar
// Do a check for these two browsers. If they have something else, send them
over to the html version
// Note: AOL4 doesn't tell us who it is -- under certain circumstances, it
doesn't say it's AOL, so we can't check for it.

var browser = "";

if ( (parseInt(navigator.appVersion) >= 4) &&
	((navigator.appName.indexOf("Microsoft") != -1) ||
(navigator.appName.indexOf("Netscape") != -1)) &&
	((navigator.appVersion.indexOf("Win") != -1) ||
(navigator.appVersion.indexOf("Mac") != -1)) ) {
	browser = "okay";
}

else {
	browser = "other";
}

// end hiding -->
</script>

Contact page :

http://personalmko.fidelity.com/products/funds/mfl_frame.shtml?316071109

Confirming bug.

Comment 2

[Felix Miata]

Conforming summary to TFM item 10 at 
http://www.mozilla.org/projects/tech-evangelism/site/procedures.html#file-new

Comment 3

[Jay Patel [:jay]]

The original steps work for me with both Firefox 1.0 and Mozilla 1.7.5:
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.5) Gecko/20041107 Firefox/1.0

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.5) Gecko/20041217

The JS still only checks for "Microsoft" and "Netscape", so they either updated
the website or disabled the redirect.  Should we mark this WFM?

Comment 4

[Shaya Potter]

it still doesn't work on Linux.

If I manually edit libnecko.so to change the X11 to Win (simple replacement)

then one gets "Mozilla/5.0 (Win; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.7.5)" which passes
their test and makes it fully workable.

This is a hack I've had to do for years now, reasoning being that even changing
the user agent doesn't change navigator.appName as that's hardcoded into the X11
binaries as X11, don't know if it changed to change with the user agent.

Comment 5

[Chris Lawson (gone)]

This also seems to work fine on Firefox 2 and Camino-trunk on Mac. Updating summary and OS to reflect current reality.

Comment 6

[Chris Lawson (gone)]

INCOMPLETE due to lack of activity since the end of 2009.

If someone is willing to investigate the issues raised in this bug to determine whether they still exist, *and* work with the site in question to fix any existing issues, please feel free to re-open and assign to yourself.

Sorry for the bugspam; filter on "NO MORE PRE-2010 TE BUGS" to remove.