969844 - mobile.de sends desktop site to Firefox on Android

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Web Compatibility :: Mobile, defect, P1)

Description

[sezen.guenes]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.9; rv:28.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/28.0 (Beta/Release)
Build ID: 20140205162153

Steps to reproduce:

I visited mobile.de with Firefox OS.


Actual results:

I got a Desktop Website.


Expected results:

I expected a Mobile Website.

Comment 1

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

This site has multiple issues:

1) Server-side browser detection doesn't detect Firefox OS devices as smartphones. Firefox OS gets redirected to the desktop site:

GET / HTTP/1.1
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Mobile; rv:26.0) Gecko/26.0 Firefox/26.0
Host: mobile.de

HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently
Location: http://www.mobile.de/

while Firefox for Android gets redirected to the mobile site:

GET / HTTP/1.1
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Android; Mobile; rv:26.0) Gecko/26.0 Firefox/26.0
Host: www.mobile.de

HTTP/1.1 307 Temporary Redirect
Location: http://m.mobile.de

2) Client-side sniffing sends Firefox for Android back to the desktop site. This happens because the site tries to limit the mobile version to only certain versions of the Android operating system.

        function detect(ua){var os={},browser={},webkit=ua.match(/WebKit\/([\d.]+)/),android=ua.match(/(Android)\s+([\d.]+)/);if(webkit)browser.version=webkit[1];browser.webkit=!!webkit;if(android){os.android=true;os.version=android[2];}return{os:os,browser:browser};}

The Firefox User-Agent string does not contain information about the device's Android version.

3) The CSS for the mobile site contains some styling that is webkit-specific and does not have equivalent rules for other devices, for example:

.flexBox {
    -webkit-box-align: center;
    -webkit-box-pack: justify;
    display: -webkit-box;
}

Comment 2

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

The first issue to fix would be adding some equivalents to the Flexbox CSS to make it standards-compliant and cross-browser compatible. See http://www.otsukare.info/2014/01/23/flexbox-converter for tips.

Afterwards, fixing the JavaScript to tolerate devices without Android version in the User-Agent string will solve the issues for Firefox on Android.

Finally, the backend sniffing should recognise that devices with the string "Mobi" or "Mobile" in the User-Agent string can be redirected to the mobile site. This will give users of browsers like Firefox OS and Opera Mini a better user experience.

Comment 3

[Karl Dubost💡 :karlcow]

They also have sites
* France http://www.automobile.fr/
* Italy http://www.automobile.it/
* Romania http://www.mobile.de/ro/
* Poland http://www.mobile.de/pl/

They belong to eBay.
I will try to find out if there is a specific team for it.

Comment 4

[Karl Dubost💡 :karlcow]

Contacted someone at Ebay

==========
We have identified a series of issues for the Mobile.de family of Web sites which belong to Ebay group. I'm not sure Ebay directly manages these sites. You might be able to tell us who we should contact in this company.


Explanation of the bug in details.
Simple version: http://webcompat.com/simplebug/index.html#mozilla/969844
Geeky version: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=969844
==============

Comment 5

[Jay Barker]

Thanks for contacting my colleague at Ebay.

These details did reach the correct group responsible for the mobile.de family of web sites. We are tracking this issue. 

We will add comments here when the issue status changes, or if there are any questions. Thanks for the detailed bug report!

Comment 6

[Mike Taylor [:miketaylr]]

This is still an issue, at least fore firefox for android. Any possible updates Jay?

Comment 7

[Mike Taylor [:miketaylr]]

Dennis, let's send a UA spoof for this one.

Comment 8

[Dennis Schubert [:denschub]]

Attachment: GitHub Pull Request adding the UA override for this case

Comment 9

[Dennis Schubert [:denschub]]

Landed in bug 1512907.