384616 - travel.state.gov - text is hidden under vertical menu on left, missing styles, etc., in non-Firefox UAs

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Tech Evangelism Graveyard :: English US, defect)

Description

[Otis Maclay]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X Mach-O; en; rv:1.8.1.4) Gecko/20070509 Camino/1.5
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X Mach-O; en; rv:1.8.1.4) Gecko/20070509 Camino/1.5

this page displays correctly in firefox, IE and Safari(!).

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1.access url above
2.
3.
Actual Results:  
same

Expected Results:  
display text using right edge of vertical menu as margin

while this isn't critical (unless you want a passport and don't have another browser), it suggests the possibility of other problems, or a departure from w3 standards.

FYI, I use camino as my main reference for web desigh.

Thanks,

O.

Otis Maclay
Houston, TX

Comment 1

[Stuart Morgan]

This site sniffs for specific browsers (not including Camino) and serves everyone else broken content. Please complain to the site admin.

> or a departure from w3 standards.

Yes, sniffing for specific browsers and breaking all the others is certainly not a very standards-friendly way for them to have designed their site.

Comment 2

[Chris Lawson (gone)]

You might also suggest to the site admins that they read

http://geckoisgecko.org/

when you complain.

Comment 3

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

Eh, the US DoS is a high-profile enough site for this to warrant TE.  This affects Minefield/GP, too.

Comment 4

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

Kicking to TE.

Comment 6

[David E. Ross]

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1.6) Gecko/20070802 SeaMonkey/1.1.4

This also affects SeaMonkey.  

This bug report applies to several other State Department Web pages, including <http://travel.state.gov/passport/about/npic/npic_896.html>.  With SeaMonkey, that page can be fully viewed only by turning CSS off (View > Use Style > None).  

Some pages at <http://travel.state.gov/> appear to be in violation of Section 508 of the U.S. Rehabilitation Act of 1986 (as amended in 1998).  They also contain links to other pages at that same site that are 404.  

Comment 8

[Martijn Wargers (dead)]

The site in question uses some user agent detection to write different external stylesheets, depending on what browser you use. For Mozilla based browsers, the urls of those stylesheets point to this:
http://travel.state.gov/includes/css/mozilla/header.css
http://travel.state.gov/includes/css/mozilla/body.css
http://travel.state.gov/includes/css/mozilla/footer.css
So, the website owner of that site should upload something there.

Comment 10

[Tim Riley [:timr]]

This is still happening for Firefox 3.1:

Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.5; en-US; rv:1.9.1b3pre) Gecko/20090212 Shiretoko/3.1b3pre

This has to be pushing people to other browsers.  Works fine on Safari.

Comment 11

[Mike Shaver (:shaver -- probably not reading bugmail closely)]

Does it happen if you change your UA string to have "Firefox" instead of "Shiretoko"?  Since it works in Firefox, I'm not sure why it would push people to other browsers.

Comment 12

[Marcia Knous [:marcia]]

Attachment: Screenshot of site running 20090212 Shiretoko nightly

Comment 13

[Marcia Knous [:marcia]]

Attachment: Screenshot of site running FF 3.0.6

Comment 14

[David E. Ross]

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 5.1; rv:9.0) Gecko/20111217 SeaMonkey/2.6

Re my own comment #6:  This is no longer a problem with SeaMonkey, even with "Advertise Firefox compatibility" disabled.  Is this still a problem with other non-Firefox Gecko browsers?

Comment 15

[Chris Lawson (gone)]

Looks like the site's been redesigned. I can't get to the specific URL from comment 6 any more (it's 404), and I don't recall the original root page on that domain exhibiting the problem in the first place.

Is there an extant URL that used to demonstrate the problem that definitively does not demonstrate it now? If so, this is definitely FIXED; if not, I'm OK with closing it FIXED-by-redesign and just saying "file new bugs for any current problems".

Comment 16

[David E. Ross]

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 5.1; rv:13.0) Gecko/20120604 SeaMonkey/2.10

Even with "Advertise Firefox compatibility" disabled, the cited page now appears okay.  It seems the Web site was overhauled.  

I suggest that the originator mark this as Fixed/WorksForMe.  (I don't do that with bug reports that I did not create.)