276282 - partylite.com - sniffs for "Firefox", rejects anything without "Firefox" in UA string

Status: RESOLVED INCOMPLETE

(Tech Evangelism Graveyard :: English US, defect)

Description

[Ramona]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7) Gecko/20040625
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7) Gecko/20040625

This is the message when trying to access any https:// link at the PartyLite
site, using any Gecko browser, i.e., Netscape 7.2, 7.2, Mozilla 1.7.3, 1.7.5,
Firefox 1.0, or Thunderbird 1.0:
 
Your browser needs to be Microsoft IE 5.0 or higher. You can download Microsoft
IE 5.5 by clicking this link. 

This is definitely discriminitory to all users of Gecko browsers! 

I discovered this inaccessibility when trying to help my daughter, who is a
Party Lite Representative, access her https pages to enter orders, etc.  She
uses Mozilla 1.7.3.  She had already told me it was impossible, but I thought
perhaps she might have been doing something incorrectly.  Unfortunately this was
not the case.  I hope you can work with this site to allow the Gecko browser
users access to the secure pages.

I did sent them an email on 12/19/04 complaining about the priorization of
Internet Explorer for using the secure (https) pages.  I have yet to hear
anything from the site... 



Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1.  Trying to access the https pages on the site.
2.
3.

Actual Results:  
I was given the message to download Internet explorer with a link for the browser!

Expected Results:  
Allowed access to the https pages.

Comment 1

[Felix Miata]

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

Reporter, when you file a TE bug, please follow the reporting guidelines.

Comment 2

[Chris Lawson (gone)]

They no longer reject non-IE browsers, but they're being pretty stupid about how they detect non-IE browsers:

		function CheckBrowser()
		{
			//If win, must be IE, else Firefox
			if(GetOS())
			{
				if (!CheckForIE())
				{
					GetBrowserPage();
				}
			}
			else
			{
				if (!CheckForFirefox())
				{
					GetBrowserPage();
				}
			}
		}	//end func

and

		function CheckForFirefox()
		{
			//check for firefox
			var rtnVal = true;
			try
			{
				var x = navigator.userAgent.indexOf("Firefox");
				if (x == -1) 
				{
					rtnVal = false;
				}
			}
			catch(e){
				rtnVal = false;
			}
			
			return rtnVal;
		}

Comment 3

[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.