775919 - BBC iPlayer does not detect the Firefox UA

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Web Compatibility :: Site Reports, defect)

Description

[mikehaab]

Attachment: Screenshot_2012-07-20-12-42-20-1699927734.png

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Android; Mobile; rv:15.0) Gecko/15.0 Firefox/15.0
Build ID: 20120717123509

Steps to reproduce:

attempted to open bbc.co.uk/iplayer using the latest Firefox for android beta


Actual results:

I got forwarded to the iPlayer device not supported page on my Samsung galaxy s3


Expected results:

it should have taken me to the iPlayer home page, this works fine in my stock internet app

Comment 1

[Aaron Train [:aaronmt]]

This is on the onus of BBC accepting our user-agent, and has nothing to do with the Firefox front-end.

Comment 2

[Martijn Wargers (dead)]

Using Phony identifying as stock android browser makes it work, so this is definitely a UA issue.

Comment 4

[Aaron Train [:aaronmt]]

Their iPlayer fails at detecting HTML5 video in Fennec on news-articles such as http://m.bbc.co.uk/news/business-22319537

Do we have a contact we could email about this?

Comment 5

[bug.zilla]

I would try both of these:

(1) Email at:
[e-mail]

(2) Webform here:
https://iplayerhelp.external.bbc.co.uk/templates/bbciplayer/emailForms/emailPage

iPlayer is massively popular in the UK so this affects many users.

Comment 6

[bug.zilla]

An update:

this now works:
http://m.bbc.co.uk/news/business-22319537

but this still does not:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/mobile/iplayer/

Comment 7

[bug.zilla]

Hi,

has there been an update to this?

Thanks

Comment 8

[Mike Taylor [:miketaylr]]

This is still this case today. I've confirmed that spoofing the UA on Android gets us the correct page. However I'm not able to test that the content plays correctly from Cananda (without some UK proxy magic). I also emailed [e-mail] to ask them to fix or join us in this bug to explain any problems we might not know about.

Comment 9

[Mike Taylor [:miketaylr]]

A reply,

"Unfortunately your query relates to the UK BBC iPlayer service and not the global BBC iPlayer app.

For further assistance with this please contact the UK BBC iPlayer team:

https://iplayerhelp.external.bbc.co.uk/templates/bbciplayer/emailForms/emailPage"

Will see if using that form gets us anywhere.

Comment 10

[Mike Taylor [:miketaylr]]

More fruitful discussion, a reply from Izas from BBC:

>  Thanks for the getting in touch, we wanted to follow up and give you some background as to the error. 
>
> In our mobile iPlayer web app (which is customised for mobile/tablet browsers), we use device detection (we look for the Android version in the user agent) in order to optimise playback and UI experience. Both the Android stock browser and Chrome supply this information. 
>
> We checked Firefox for Android UA:
>
> Useragent's Mozilla/5.0 (Android; Mobile; rv:23.0) Gecko/23.0 Firefox/23.0
> 
> And since it doesn't provide the Android version, we are unable to make a judgement as to the capabilities of the device, therefore redirecting the user to our generic 'Unsupported device' message.
>
> We're supporting Android 2.2+ (I.e. 2.2, 2.3, 3.x and 4.x) so enabling support for Firefox could be a case of modifying that UA to carry that extra information. 

And I've replied:

> May I ask what kind of information (or likely, bugs) you're actually trying to infer based on Android version?
> 
> Firefox for Android is the same browser for all versions that we officially support (2.2+)[1]. The Android stock browser is relying on OS updates for WebKit updates and bug fixes, etc. Firefox for Android updates independently of the OS, so it's not quite the same.
>
> As the iPlayer web apps does work in Firefox for Android (after spoofing), it seems like defaulting to supported (or just working in an unofficially supported status) would make sense.
>
> What do you think?

Comment 11

[Mike Taylor [:miketaylr]]

It's been a week and no response just yet.

Comment 12

[bug.zilla]

Mike, thanks for the update.
Please do persevere with this one.

I cannot overstate how popular BBC's iPlayer is and this affects many, many users.

Happy to test from the UK if you cannot access it from your location.

Comment 14

[Mike Taylor [:miketaylr]]

I'm still getting the unsupported page, so will reach out again to our friends at the BBC.

Comment 15

[Mike Taylor [:miketaylr]]

Izas writes,

"Hi Mike,
I've forwarded your link to the iPlayer team for consideration. I'll keep
you updated when I hear back."

Comment 16

[Hallvord R. M. Steen [:hallvors]]

Hm.. the automated test thinks this is fixed, but it seems the reason simply is that the /iplayer/radio URL just forwards to the /radio URL which doesn't say "not supported".. However, the bbc.co.uk/radio URL is not the actual iplayer UI. I guess we should just update the URLs for the bug report and test to bbc.co.uk/iplayer ?

Comment 17

[Rich]

With a new release of iplayer today, you should find this issue resolved.

Comment 18

[Mike Taylor [:miketaylr]]

Wow, thanks!