Broken MS Browser Sniffing
Author: Stuart Millington Publishing date: 03.04.2003 00:28
Having seen a few articles alleging that Microsoft were using browser sniffing to deliberately serve broken pages to browsers other than their own Internet Explorer, I actually came across an example today.
I was looking for some documentation on MS's MSDN site ? a visual FoxPro language reference, and the URL I was provided with as a reference was msdn.microsoft.com/nhp/default.asp?contentid=28000961. So, with my usual browser configuration - Opera 7 with J(ava)script and all plug-ins disabled - I went to the URL and saw the, er, sight :( Incorrect font sizes, no page header and no left hand menu column. (Image 1)
At first I thought it was because I had J(ava)script disabled, then I realised that I had left the user-agent header (which you can choose in Opera) set to Opera. So, out of curiosity, I changed it to "Mozilla 5.0" and reloaded the URL. (Image 2) With no other changes, the site had just "magically" found a top and left frame which actually made it look like a site. Except for the font sizes (which were still set too large for the fixed width menu blocks) and the main column width.
As a final test, I changed the user-agent to "IE 6.0" and reloaded the URL. (Image 3) Everything works and the fonts are set correctly relative to the menu box's sizes. Obviously, the left hand hierarchical menu does not work here as Microsoft assume that they only have to provide primary navigation for users who have J(ava)script enabled.
This final example shows that Opera is perfectly capable of handling the site with the same HTML+CSS as presented to their preferred, Internet Explorer, users. So why would they go out of their way and spend extra time and money providing a different and broken version of the site for Opera users? Is it a mistake? Is it incompetence? Is it a deliberate attempt to make non-IE browsers look bad? I know which explanation I believe, but I'll leave it up to readers to form their own opinions.
If you want to download Opera and try this for yourself, Opera is available from http://www.opera.com/.
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