Opera 10 is too old! Again!

Friday, 16. May 2008, 16:46:44

Last post I talked about a website with broken version sniffing. It's now been a little over a week since then. I emailed them at the time, but have yet to receive a reply of any sort. The problem still exists, so I don't feel guilty at all about naming that web site now...

Congratulations to ... The Australian Bureau of Meterology!

... and their browser sniffer: http://mirror.bom.gov.au/products/IDR.browser_check.v07.js

The "good" news is that Opera is far from the only application to suffer from this sort of short-sightedness. I mentioned that IE has the same problem on the same site, and a comment to my previous post mentions Flash version sniffing with the same affliction.

Although the cynic in me suspects that sites will have different Flash version sniffing code for different browsers, and only the path followed by Opera will have the bug. I will be very happy to be wrong, though!

Opera 10 is too old!TPG Web Menus

Comments

And I'm sure there are many other sites out there which suffer the same problem, and it's a serious one at that. Opera can't expect all of these web developers to update their code immediately for the 1% of visitors that will be affected, so I wonder what feasible solutions can be implemented by Opera.

Perhaps if the UA string says "Opera 9+1", and say this was an optional setting like the current UA spoofing? (I can't remember if the list of spoofed sites can be periodically and automatically updated)

By exclipy, # 17. May 2008, 01:04:41

Actually, I would expect sites to update their code! It's broken and needs fixing! 1% of a developers day is 5 minutes, and the fix is so simple it could be done in 1 or 2.

If UA spoofing was going to be considered, I'd much rather see a simple "ID As Opera 9" rather than "9+1". Sites too stupid to understand version 10 stuff will be out of date enough to just accept version 9.

By Andrew Gregory, # 17. May 2008, 08:05:48

yeah. but what will happen, when opera 10 is supporting things that 9 (.5) can't do? then they look for opera 10...

so how about opera X or opera 2010? *g* (see comments on your last blogentry)

By mabdul, # 17. May 2008, 10:22:51

UA spoofing is already in Opera. Taking exclipy's suggestion, I'd add to the existing Site Preferences -> Network -> Browser identification list:

Identify as Opera 10
Identify as Opera 9
Identify as Firefox
Identify as Internet Explorer
Mask as Firefox
Mask as Internet Explorer

And so on, ad nauseum, as sites continue to use broken browser sniffing code...

PS, I've added a comment to my previous blog entry re "Opera X" etc.

By Andrew Gregory, # 17. May 2008, 12:52:34