373644 - umuc.edu - WebTycho courseware system claims that Camino doesn't support JavaScript 1.5; works with Firefox

Status: RESOLVED INCOMPLETE

(Tech Evangelism Graveyard :: English US, defect)

Description

[sbuggell]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/418.9.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Safari/419.3
Build Identifier: Version 2007022813 (1.0.4)

Even through javascript 1.7 is the latest version, my school's website (tychousa.umuc.edu) gives me the following error and fails to load crucial class information, ie. homework assignments, conferences, etc.



Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1.  Log in to school web site
2.  Attempt to access particular class
3.
Actual Results:  
"JavaScript 1.5 or higher is required for use with WebTycho. Please click Refresh/Reload for upgrade information and follow the instructions."

Upon clicking on this link, it sends me to download Netscape.

Expected Results:  
Display course menu selections in left side frame and allow access and useage.

Comment 1

[Stuart Morgan]

First, try again without spoofing as Safari, and make sure that you haven't disabled JavaScript in the Web Features preferences.
If that doesn't work, try spoofing as Firfox, and if it works, inform the webmaster that looking for the names of browsers is a terrible way to determine capabilities.
If it still doesn't work, then something else is wrong with their version detection scripts.

Camino 1.0.x supports at least through JS 1.6, so this isn't a Camino bug.

Comment 2

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

This has come up before, either with UMBC or UMUC (I can't find it now), so we might consider kicking this to TE.

Comment 3

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

http://tychousa6.umuc.edu/js/browsercheck.js is the browser-detection code.  It looks like they check some browsers and then hard-code JS versions (which is why Firefox only reports JS 1.5 on the "Check Your Browser" page even though it also supports JS 1.6.  (That script seems to be copied almost exactly from http://www.mozilla.org/docs/web-developer/sniffer/browser_type_oo.html except the outdated Mozilla.org "do not use this" actually throws Camino into the JS 1.5 camp).

It's pretty convoluted for me, so I can't really tell what path they're sending Camino down, but if I change my vendor to Firefox, I no longer get the warning.  I can't tell what happens with Minefield/GP, since the one I have lying around simply refuses to log in.

Comment 4

[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.