338499 - Yahoo.com blocks Non-Firefox Gecko browsers from viewing their homepage redesign preview

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Tech Evangelism Graveyard :: English US, defect)

Description

[SpaceCat85]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X Mach-O; en-US; rv:1.8.0.3) Gecko/20060427 Camino/1.0.1
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X Mach-O; en-US; rv:1.8) Gecko/20051111 Firefox/1.5

Yahoo! has recently allowed users to view a preview of their newly-redesigned homepage.  However, Camino users are only served a static JPEG preview.  

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1.  Visit yahoo.com
2.  Click on the blue box in the upper right-hand corner that says "Preview the all-new Yahoo! home page".

Actual Results:  
Instead of viewing a working preview, Yahoo! will just display a large JPEG that says the following:
Thanks for your interest in the sneak preview of the new Yahoo! home page.  Unfortunately, you're using a browser we don't support today.*
Check back again in the coming weeks - we plan to support additional browser versions soon.
*The all-new Yahoo! currently supports Internet Explorer 6 and Firefox 1.5

Expected Results:  
Instead of a static preview of the redesign, a working preview of the new Yahoo! homepage layout should have loaded.  Changing Camino's UA string to Firefox 1.5 in CamiTools or via another method produces the expected results.

The image that Yahoo! serves Camino can also be viewed here:
http://us.i1.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/i/mntl/ww/06q2/bd_unsup2.jpg

Comment 1

[Bob Clary [:bc] (inactive)]

yeah, Camino along with minefield and bonecho and any non-Firefox gecko browser.

Comment 2

[Smokey Ardisson (offline for a while; not following bugs - do not email)]

This is working now in Camino-idenfiying-as-Camino on all three branches and in BonEcho Alpha 3.  Sometimes public shaming does work, I guess :-)  Thanks Bob!

Comment 3

[Justin Kerk]

The word seems not to have spread to all the divisions of Yahoo, http://ca.yahoo.com/ still tells me to "upgrade to a more recent browser" such as Firefox 1.5 when I load it with Minefield. I complained with the "Send Feedback on Yahoo! Canada's New Home Page" form a while ago but nothing happened. Anyone up for some more public shaming? :)

Comment 4

[Chris Casciano]

well, after this working for some months, I checked mail this morning only to find camino blocked again. 

I'll not reopen this, but instead point to bug 334071  [which is open, and always was] and let TE folks decide how to handle things 

Comment 5

[Bob Clary [:bc] (inactive)]

Jeremy, can you spread the word about detecting Gecko and specific branches instead of detecting only Firefox?