504530 - maps.google.com - "My Location" geolocation feature sniffs for "Firefox", broken in other browsers

Status: RESOLVED INVALID

(Tech Evangelism Graveyard :: English US, defect)

Description

[arno renevier]

Hi,
google maps has introduced a new "My location" feature that uses new geolocation api.
http://google-latlong.blogspot.com/2009/07/blue-circle-comes-to-your-desktop.html

We have a xulrunner-1.9.1 based browser and we have implemented @mozilla.org/geolocation/prompt;1 so geolocation works fine on this demo
http://3liz.org/geolocation/
but we don't get the blue circle. We are not prompted for geolocation sharing either.

So, it looks like google maps checks for "firefox 3.5" instead of checking for "gecko 1.9.1" or using a feature detection

Comment 1

[arno renevier]

Sorry, I realize I was not clear.

we don't get the blue circle *on google maps*. We are not prompted for geolocation sharing
either *on google maps*.

In the demo, everything works fine.

Comment 2

[Chris Lawson (gone)]

Does including the string "Firefox" or "Firefox/3.5" in your browser's user-agent string fix the problem?

Do other Gecko browsers (like SeaMonkey or Camino) exhibit the same issue?

Comment 3

[arno renevier]

(In reply to comment #2)
> Does including the string "Firefox" or "Firefox/3.5" in your browser's
> user-agent string fix the problem?

yes, setting general.useragent.extra.browser to Firefox or Firefox/3.5 fixes the problem

> Do other Gecko browsers (like SeaMonkey or Camino) exhibit the same issue?

I did not try with Seamonkey or Camino, but iceweasel exhibits the issue

Comment 4

[Karl Dubost💡 :karlcow]

Closing as INVALID. Google Maps has changed multiple times since. The last version is widely different.