Study: FireFox still gaining on Internet Explorer

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Yahoo is a bad example.

While most of Yahoo does work fine with Firefox and other non-IE browsers, at least one part does not: YahooGroups Chat (not to be confused with the main Yahoo Chat) using the Java Chat client.

If you go to a YahooGroup using IE and click on the "Chat" link to the left, Yahoo will take you to a special chat area for that particular group, with the Java Chat applet embedded. But, if you use a non-IE browser, Yahoo will take you to one of the main Yahoo Chat rooms instead!

Now, here's the kicker: there is NO REASON for this inherent in the browsers themselves! The YahooGroups Chat works JUST FINE in FireFox, IF you can get to it! It's just that Yahoo won't take you to it if it detects that you aren't using IE!

How does it detect the browser? By using the UserAgent string that each browser sends as part of its HTTP 1.1 GET request to load a Web page! Now, get this: there is a free Extension (not to be confused with a plugin) that you can install into Firefox that will give you a new command in the "Tools" menu, that allows you to CHANGE the UserAgent that gets reported! It comes with preset settings for IE 6.1, Netscape 4.8, or Opera 7.51 (all reporting as running under Windows XP), but you can make your own, and of course switch back to the default which tells the Web server that you're using a Gecko rendering engine browser, and specifically Firefox.

Here's the REAL kicker: install this extension, and switch the UserAgent to IE, and THEN try to go to a YahooGroup Chat, and it WORKS JUST FINE! This PROVES that there is NO incompatibility with Firefox ITSELF regarding YahooGroup Chat, only that the WEB PROGRAMMER of that particular Yahoo feature was LAZY and used the UserAgent string to only let "compatible" browsers in, without taking into account that new compatible browsers would be coming out!

Frankly, the UserAgent parameter to the HTTP 1.1 standard is itself a BAD IDEA, in my opinion. It is what allows the statistics this article is about to be tracked in the first place, but as you can see, they can easily be spoofed, and many users have to spoof them just to get into a site or use its full features because the Web programmer was too lazy to use better means of browser capability detection that don't become out-of-date.

Worse, the UserAgent is what let IE (and Netscape before them) get away with extra-standard HTML "features" in the FIRST place! If Web servers had no easy, standardized way of determining browsers, then both the browsers and the sites would HAVE to work within the standards!

Posted by: Joel R   Posted on: 11/03/04 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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