918643 - kindle cloud reader incorrectly detects FirefoxOS as Android

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Web Compatibility :: Site Reports, defect)

Description

[alex_mayorga]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Mobile; rv:18.0) Gecko/18.0 Firefox/18.0 (Nightly/Aurora)
Build ID: 20130712192650

Steps to reproduce:

Loaded read.amazon.com on the browser.


Actual results:

Page wrongly detects the OS as Android and gives a link to Play Store.


Expected results:

The same reader available for Firefox on the desktop should appear.

Comment 1

[alex_mayorga]

Attachment: Screen capture of the issue.

Comment 2

[Mike Taylor [:miketaylr]]

Should be noted that all of the browsers on my Android (Firefox, Opera Mobile, default "Internet", Firefox Mobile) get this same message. They're obviously very interested in getting people to download their Android app.

Comment 3

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

If Amazon has a Web based reader, let's try to work with them to get that content for Firefox OS. If not, I don't think it's worth pursuing a fix to change the error message.

cc Karl, who has a relationship with someone at Amazon who has already been very helpful wrt fixing content for Firefox.

Comment 4

[Karl Dubost💡 :karlcow]

On iPod Touch I receive a screen for downloading an App on the Apple Store.

On Meego (Nokia N9) + Opera Mobile, I get  Kindle Cloud Reader is not available for this browser. Please try again with a supported Web browser: 3 icons for Chrome 20+, Safari 5+ and Firefox 10+.
and then another sentence to encourage downloading the app for phone and tablet.

On Meego (Nokia N9) + Firefox, same thing.

I don't have high hopes for this.

Comment 5

[Karl Dubost💡 :karlcow]

Daniel, 

are you aware of any Web based reader at Amazon http://read.amazon.com/ ?
And if yes, are there chances to get other browsers/systems without native access the http://read.amazon.com/

Comment 6

[danielsi]

I'm not aware of a web based reader that would work well for mobile browsers, but I'll ask around.

Comment 7

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

Now, we could't really blame Amazon for beliving it's an Android device when we spoofed as Firefox on Android for amazon.com, I presume.. See bug 826512.

There is indeed a web-based reader on read.amazon.com - I can log in and it works fine (also without Flash) in Firefox on Ubuntu. It would be great to have it running on FxOS! When I remove the Amazon spoof manually, the reader does load and seems to mostly function - it's however not quite responsive enough, it's too large for the screen and handles touch and drag in a way that prevents scrolling around. The effect is that you can read the first book(s) in your shelf, but only backwards (you can click on the left side of the page to turn to the previous page, but not the right side to turn forwards). Still - that's pretty close..

Comment 8

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

I think we should contact Amazon and say "hi, mind investigating if this code can be slightly more responsive?"
(If someone thinks we should do some more analysis and come up with specific suggestions first, just remove the [contactready] label again)

Comment 9

[Karl Dubost💡 :karlcow]

Hi Daniel, 

did you see the comment #7 by Hallvord.

(In reply to Hallvord R. M. Steen from comment #7)
> There is indeed a web-based reader on read.amazon.com - I can log in and it
> works fine (also without Flash) in Firefox on Ubuntu. It would be great to
> have it running on FxOS!


Do you think we could have hopes that could be pushed inside Amazon? Or/and if you could put us in contact with the appropriate person or team (even in private if necessary), that would be great. Thanks!

Comment 11

[Dietrich Ayala (:dietrich)]

I'm also in conversation with some contacts at Amazon.

Comment 12

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

(When trying to load read.amazon.com in Android stock browser, it just pushes the Kindle for Android app though. It's apparently not a mobile-friendly webapp in its current form..)

Comment 13

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

The "detects Fx OS as Android" problem has disappeared when we stopped sending the Android UA to amazon.com. I consider this bug invalid. Now, it would be very nice if Amazon could tweak the web-based reader to be a bit more mobile-friendly and work on Fx OS. I've opened bug 964167 to follow up that.

Comment 14

[Dietrich Ayala (:dietrich)]

That's exactly what I filed bug 957310 for, but Karl duped against this bug :/

Comment 15

[alex_mayorga]

Attachment: Bug alive and kicking on Huawei Y300-F1

Why is this INVALID exactly?

The bug it's alive and kicking on a production device for which I paid real money for, namely Huawei Y300-F1.

Shall I request a refund from Amazon for the Kindle books I could no longer read on a device of my choosing?

Comment 16

[Mike Taylor [:miketaylr]]

Reopening based on Alex's screenshot. I'm away from all my FxOS devices until next week so I can't do any further analysis right now.

Comment 17

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

To clarify: Amazon used to send Firefox OS their desktop page. As Amazon is big and important, we used to have a secret spoof setting in Firefox OS that made the Firefox OS browser send amazon.com the Firefox for Android User-Agent.

Later on Amazon fixed their sniffing to send Firefox OS mobile content, and we removed the spoof setting. 

It obviously makes no sense to first special-case Amazon.com and pretend to be Firefox on Android, then contact them to complain that we're detected as an Android browser and offered Android apps. Hence, this bug was (and probably still is) invalid. The main question is:

Does Alex's device run a version of Firefox OS that spoofs on Amazon? It's not trivial to observe this directly, but if you figure out what Firefox OS version it runs perhaps we can check..?

Comment 18

[Karl Dubost💡 :karlcow]

Alex, could you give the full details of your Firefox OS device?
Including the build number and User Agent string? (Go to Developer Information).
Also does the problem happened when connected through WIFI?

What hallvord explained is probably the right answer and indeed unfortunately the bug is INVALID, aka if the UA override is active on the device. If it's the earlier version of the UA override, it's possible to change by manually removing it (geeky manipulation, I can explain). If it's the new version (server side management), there should be no issue at least due to UA override. 

All in all, it shows one more time the danger of UA override.

Comment 19

[Karl Dubost💡 :karlcow]

oh forgotten on my firefox os I correctly receive the form for login/password, not the call for Google Play.

Comment 20

[alex_mayorga]

(In reply to Karl Dubost :karlcow from comment #18)
> Alex, could you give the full details of your Firefox OS device?
> Including the build number and User Agent string? (Go to Developer
> Information).
OS: 1.1.1.0hd
Firmware: Y300-F1V100R001C00B016
Hardware: MSM8x25_U8833 .VerB
Platform: 18.1
Build: 20140129173333
Channel: release-huawei
 
> Also does the problem happened when connected through WIFI?
Yes, the problem occurs regardless of the network used

Comment 21

[Karl Dubost💡 :karlcow]

Alex,
so your version of Firefox OS is 1.1 and 18.1

Hmmm I see that it might be our (Mozilla) fault somehow.
The UA override file of previous releases are not updated. Let me discuss that on compatibility list first.
https://github.com/mozilla-b2g/gaia/blob/v1.1.0hd/build/ua-override-prefs.js

Thanks Alex.

Comment 22

[Karl Dubost💡 :karlcow]

Alex,

I have opened Bug 1039949 which is to take care of your issue for Amazon and other Web sites. Let's close this bug back to its initial resolution.

Comment 23

[alex_mayorga]

Karl,

This is needinfo for me, yet I'm not quite clear on what's needed from my end.

Could you please clarify if anything is in fact needed from my end?

Comment 24

[Karl Dubost💡 :karlcow]

Alex,
Nothing more yet. But thanks for pinging on this bug again. Because we need to deal with the updates on the client side.