268765 - ancestry.com - can't run the basic census image viewer for many years; e.g. 1880

Status: RESOLVED INCOMPLETE

(Tech Evangelism Graveyard :: English US, defect)

Description

[Joe George]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.5) Gecko/20041107 Firefox/1.0
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.5) Gecko/20041107 Firefox/1.0

The URL above is to the home page for the ancestry.com web site. 1880 is free
for a while so click on that. Enter a name in the last name field and click
search. A page will appear with the results of the search. Click on any of the
icons in the "view image" column. A page will appear that will load a census
image. Note the block on the page with arrows pointing in all directions. The
icon in the center is for a document. Repeat the above using Internet Explorer.
The icon in the center is a pointing hand. The viewer that is used with IE is
very much superior to the one that appears with Netscape or Firefox. I have
nagged them about this situation time and again, but my pleas have fallen on
deaf ears. They refuse to set up the viewer to allow any browser than IE to work
well. This particular web site is the only one with this information indexed so
that all of the census images have to be accessed to find a particular record.
So I am compelled to use IE for this. After I do so I have to clean up the spy
ware. Is it possible to get Firefox to fool the web site into thinking IE is
running?

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1.See details above.
2.
3.

Actual Results:  
See details above.

Expected Results:  
Worked like it does with IE.

Comment 1

[Jaime Mitchell (use [e-mail] for email)]

This is not a firefox enhancement changing severity.

Joe do you still experience this problem?

Comment 2

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

This is an automated message, with ID "auto-resolve01".

This bug has had no comments for a long time. Statistically, we have found that
bug reports that have not been confirmed by a second user after three months are
highly unlikely to be the source of a fix to the code.

While your input is very important to us, our resources are limited and so we
are asking for your help in focussing our efforts. If you can still reproduce
this problem in the latest version of the product (see below for how to obtain a
copy) or, for feature requests, if it's not present in the latest version and
you still believe we should implement it, please visit the URL of this bug
(given at the top of this mail) and add a comment to that effect, giving more
reproduction information if you have it.

If it is not a problem any longer, you need take no action. If this bug is not
changed in any way in the next two weeks, it will be automatically resolved.
Thank you for your help in this matter.

The latest beta releases can be obtained from:
Firefox:     http://www.mozilla.org/projects/firefox/
Thunderbird: http://www.mozilla.org/products/thunderbird/releases/1.5beta1.html
Seamonkey:   http://www.mozilla.org/projects/seamonkey/

Comment 3

[Joe George]

Obviously nobody has even looked into this problem. All you have to do is try to
view a census image on ancestry.com. You will get the standard viewer not the
enhanced viewer. The enhanced viewer does not work for firefox. Just that
simple. Try it and you will see.

Comment 4

[u63580]

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8b5) Gecko/20051024 Firefox/1.5

Had a go at this.  However, they want credit card details to let me in - I am comitted to Mozilla, but not that committed :-).

Joe, can you try this with 1.5beta2 (I assume you have a login) and post a screen shot of the problem?  It sounds like a TE issue to me, in which case it can be marked as new if it is still about.

BTW I have used the UK version of the site in the past with no problems, so I wonder if things may have been updated?

Comment 5

[Joe George]

Ok, I will download the latest version and see what happens with it. They are updating the ancestry.com web site all the time so this is a moving target. The version of Firefox I'm currently using will not access the enhanced image viewer either. Their latest change to the web site must be a screw up. Their standard image viewier is actually better than their enhanced one right now. Less features, but a better image display.

Comment 6

[Joe George]

Downloaded the beta version. Tried it. Same behavior.

Comment 7

[Joe George]

Attachment: Census image screen with basic image viewer

This illustrates that the enhanced image viewer used by ancestry.com does not work with Firefox.

Comment 8

[Joe George]

Attachment: Census image screen with enhanced image viewer

This illustrates the use of the enhanced image viewer in IE. This also works (most of the time) with Netscape 8. Note the tool bar.

Comment 9

[u63580]

Is this still about?  As I said before, the UK site works fine in 1.5.0.x and current 2.0beta

Comment 10

[Joe George]

Yep. It only allows the enhanced image viewer with IE.

Comment 11

[Jerry Wear]

Be glad your enhanced viewer did not install into firefox 2.0.0.4. It did on mine and it crashes firefox whenever the viewer starts. I cannot locate the viewer plugin to remove it or identify it in config. 

Comment 12

[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.

Comment 13

[Joe George]

This one died because Ancestry.com changed the viewer last year sometime. The new one works ok, but it still does not behave the same as when it is used in IE. The scroll bars don't work. The image can be pushed around with the hand cursor, but sometimes it jumps when moving it is resumed.

Comment 14

[Chris Lawson (gone)]

(In reply to comment #13)
> This one died because Ancestry.com changed the viewer last year sometime. The
> new one works ok, but it still does not behave the same as when it is used in
> IE. The scroll bars don't work. The image can be pushed around with the hand
> cursor, but sometimes it jumps when moving it is resumed.

Please file a *new* TE bug for any outstanding issues with Ancestry.com.

Comment 15

[Joe George]

Why bother with a new TE bug at the rate they get fixed?