843137 - nytimes.com doesn't recognize B2G UA as mobile

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Web Compatibility :: Site Reports, defect, P5)

Description

[Lawrence Mandel [:lmandel] (use needinfo)]

nytimes.com serves a desktop site to B2G. Bug 823364 added an UA override for this domain. The override should be removed once the domain serves mobile content to B2G. This bug tracks the evangelism for the site to recognize the B2G UA and the removal of the override at that time.

Comment 1

[Karl Dubost💡 :karlcow]

The redirection is made server side to a different domain name.

It is not working for 
* Firefox for Android - Mozilla/5.0 (Android; Mobile; rv:18.0) Gecko/18.0 Firefox/18.0
* Firefox OS          - Mozilla/5.0 (Mobile; rv:18.0) Gecko/18.0 Firefox/18.0


# Chrome on Nexus

→ http -v HEAD http://www.nytimes.com/ User-Agent:'Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; Android 4.0.4; Galaxy Nexus Build/IMM76B) AppleWebKit/535.19 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/18.0.1025.133 Mobile Safari/535.19' Accept:"text/html" 

HEAD / HTTP/1.1
Accept: text/html
Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate, compress
Host: www.nytimes.com
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; Android 4.0.4; Galaxy Nexus Build/IMM76B) AppleWebKit/535.19 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/18.0.1025.133 Mobile Safari/535.19



HTTP/1.1 303 See Other
Connection: close
Content-Type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1
Date: Wed, 24 Jul 2013 18:51:40 GMT
Location: http://mobile.nytimes.com/redirect?to-mobile=http://www.nytimes.com/&referrer=
Server: Apache



# Firefox OS

→ http -v HEAD http://www.nytimes.com/  User-Agent:'Mozilla/5.0 (Mobile; rv:18.0) Gecko/18.0 Firefox/18.0' Accept:"text/html" 

HEAD / HTTP/1.1
Accept: text/html
Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate, compress
Host: www.nytimes.com
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Mobile; rv:18.0) Gecko/18.0 Firefox/18.0



HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Connection: close
Content-Length: 190134
Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8
Date: Wed, 24 Jul 2013 18:52:34 GMT
Server: Apache
Set-Cookie: RMID=007f0100255051f022720054; Expires=Thu, 24 Jul 2014 18:52:34 GMT; Path=/; Domain=.nytimes.com;
Set-cookie: adxcs=-; path=/; domain=.nytimes.com
Set-cookie: adxcl=l*35c97=521ec73f:1; expires=Thursday, 24-Jul-2014 18:52:34 GMT; path=/; domain=.nytimes.com
Vary: Host
cache-control: no-cache
expires: Thu, 01 Dec 1994 16:00:00 GMT
pragma: no-cache



# Firefox for Android

→ http -v HEAD http://www.nytimes.com/  User-Agent:'Mozilla/5.0 (Android; Mobile; rv:18.0) Gecko/18.0 Firefox/18.0' Accept:"text/html" 

HEAD / HTTP/1.1
Accept: text/html
Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate, compress
Host: www.nytimes.com
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Android; Mobile; rv:18.0) Gecko/18.0 Firefox/18.0



HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Connection: close
Content-Length: 191270
Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8
Date: Wed, 24 Jul 2013 18:52:45 GMT
Server: Apache
Set-Cookie: RMID=007f01004cd651f0227d001d; Expires=Thu, 24 Jul 2014 18:52:45 GMT; Path=/; Domain=.nytimes.com;
Set-cookie: adxcs=-; path=/; domain=.nytimes.com
Set-cookie: adxcl=l*35c97=521ec73f:1; expires=Thursday, 24-Jul-2014 18:52:45 GMT; path=/; domain=.nytimes.com
Vary: Host
cache-control: no-cache
expires: Thu, 01 Dec 1994 16:00:00 GMT
pragma: no-cache

Comment 2

[Karl Dubost💡 :karlcow]

Contacted [e-mail]

Comment 4

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

There is no automatic redirection going on on nytimes.com - in Safari on iPhone they throw up a banner saying "Switch to the mobile version of NYTimes.com" at the top of the page. It seems the success criteria for being recognised as a mobile browser is that banner appearing?

Logic in http://js.nyt.com/js2/build/homepage/bottom.js - here you go:

var validUserAgent=((navigator.userAgent.match(/iPhone/i)!==null)||(navigator.userAgent.match(/iPod/i)!==null))

They also use sessionStorage to implement "do not show again":

$(document).ready(function(){if(validUserAgent&&hasMobileVersion&&noMobileCookie&&showBanner){$(mobileBannerHtml).insertBefore("#shell");if(hasSessionStorage()){sessionStorage.displayBanner=false;}}$(".bannerClose").click(function(){$("#mobileBanner").toggleClass("hidden");

Comment 5

[Karl Dubost💡 :karlcow]

hmm Interesting indeed.

On Opera Mobile, I get an automatic redirection to the mobile site.
On Android browser too.

Comment 6

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

You mean the Android "stock" browser? Interesting - so there may be some backend and some front-end logic involved. Did you try any http header studies?

Comment 7

[Karl Dubost💡 :karlcow]

Hallvord see Comment #1
the first request is with chrome 
Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; Android 4.0.4; Galaxy Nexus Build/IMM76B) AppleWebKit/535.19 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/18.0.1025.133 Mobile Safari/535.19

Comment 8

[Karl Dubost💡 :karlcow]

# Safari + ipod

0. Erasing all data, cookies, etc on 
1. Entering http://nytimes.com/ 
2. Desktop site + banner for mobile. Click on the banner.
3. Next time, automatically redirected to the mobile site.

# Opera Mobile + Android

0. Erasing all data, cookies, etc on 
1. Entering http://nytimes.com/ 
2. Access to the Mobile site directly

# Firefox + Android

0. Erasing all data, cookies, etc on 
1. Entering http://nytimes.com/ 
2. Access to the Desktop site only

Comment 9

[Alastair Coote]

Hi guys,

I'm a member of the mobile web team here at NY Times. We don't handle the redirection side of things directly, but I'll take it up with the appropriate team.

Do you have a recommended user agent regex pattern for detecting Firefox for Android and B2G?

Comment 10

[Karl Dubost💡 :karlcow]

Fantastic Alastair. Appreciated.

(In reply to Alastair Coote from comment #9)
> Do you have a recommended user agent regex pattern for detecting Firefox for
> Android and B2G?

We usually recommend to be the most generic possible, to not be specific to Firefox but to embrace the mobile Web and make it less likely to break in the future. 

/.*mobi.*/i will catch Firefox for Android and B2G. It will also catch Opera Mobile and some others.

You might want to exclude tablet or ipad. Some devices have both terms. 

Do you use a commercial library or do you roll your own? We are asking because it is interesting to know what we should advocate for making the life of everyone simpler.

Thanks

Comment 11

[Karl Dubost💡 :karlcow]

forgotten to give the current UA used by devices.

User-Agent:'Mozilla/5.0 (Android; Mobile; rv:18.0) Gecko/18.0 Firefox/18.0'
User-Agent:'Mozilla/5.0 (Mobile; rv:18.0) Gecko/18.0 Firefox/18.0'

Comment 12

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

I guess few sites get both [serversniff] and [clientsniff] badges, but nytimes.com qualifies ;-)

Comment 13

[Alastair Coote]

(In reply to Karl Dubost :karlcow from comment #10)
> Do you use a commercial library or do you roll your own? We are asking
> because it is interesting to know what we should advocate for making the
> life of everyone simpler.
> 
> Thanks

We currently roll our own, but it's an area we've flagged as needing a lot of improvement in the future. We may well switch to an external library of some sort.

Just as an update, we are working on this - the changes have been committed and are in QA. I'll let you know when they are live.

Comment 14

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

I hope the same change will handle bug 753818 (mobile version of nytimes.com for Firefox on Android) :-)

Comment 15

[Alastair Coote]

Hi guys,

This change is now live. It does also include Firefox on Android (#753818) - I've tested it with both types and it seems to be working - any issues?

Comment 16

[Karl Dubost💡 :karlcow]

Fabulous. It is working! 
Thanls Alastair.

Comment 17

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

Seems the "Firefox OS" part of this fix has gone missing. Firefox on Android still gets forwarded to the mobile site, Firefox OS doesn't.

Comment 18

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

So, Alastair - could you have a look at it?

Comment 19

[Alastair Coote]

I'm no longer on the mobile web team, but I will forward this on to them for review.

Comment 20

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

Thank you Alastair! Happy to answer any questions your colleagues might have :)

Comment 21

[Alastair Coote]

This should have been fixed some time ago - I don't have an FFOS device to test with right now, but please let me know if it is not fixed.

Comment 22

[Karl Dubost💡 :karlcow]

The version which is being sent to Firefox for Android, would be perfectly working on Firefox OS.

I decided to try to contact again.
http://twitter.com/MozWebCompat/status/554494375950962689

Comment 23

[Karl Dubost💡 :karlcow]

Attachment: nytimes.jpg

(In reply to Alastair Coote from comment #21)
> This should have been fixed some time ago - I don't have an FFOS device to
> test with right now, but please let me know if it is not fixed.

Alastair, this has not been fixed. Unfortunately. 
This screenshot is how the site is rendered in Gecko, as you can see it works perfectly when faking the UA.