MS' Virtualearth claims Opera has no SVG support
Wednesday, 20. August 2008, 19:29:12
As seen in this discussion, the BBC site uses a map from maps.live.com - and all we Opera users get is an error message:
Looking into it, first there is some Opera-sniffing from the BBC itself that detects Opera and displays the warning instead of the map.
With that sniffing neutralised, the map loads - but shows the United States, not Beijing. Come one Live Maps, admit you're wrong by several thousand kilometers.. Or?
Not in the mood to admit any fault, the script instead spits out an error laying the blame on us:
So, my web browser does not support SVG, eh? Let's have a closer look at how you figured that out..
Yes, nothing but browser sniffing.. Not a single attempt at intelligent feature detection. Basically, by claiming Opera doesn't support SVG and can't load the map Microsoft is lying to the BBC and to our users.
We're sorry but your browser does not support BBC Sport's Olympic map.
Looking into it, first there is some Opera-sniffing from the BBC itself that detects Opera and displays the warning instead of the map.
With that sniffing neutralised, the map loads - but shows the United States, not Beijing. Come one Live Maps, admit you're wrong by several thousand kilometers.. Or?
Not in the mood to admit any fault, the script instead spits out an error laying the blame on us:
JavaScript - http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/olympics/7493757.stm Timeout thread: delay 10 ms Error: name: Msn.Drawing.Exception message: Your Web browser does not support SVG or VML. Some graphics features may not function properly. stacktrace: Line 1 of linked script http://dev.virtualearth.net/mapcontrol/mapcontrol.ashx?v=6.1
So, my web browser does not support SVG, eh? Let's have a closer look at how you figured that out..
if(document.all)
return new Msn.Drawing.VMLGraphic(e,b);
else{if(navigator.userAgent.indexOf("KHTML")!==-1)
return new Msn.Drawing.SVGGraphic(e,b);
var c=0,f=0,g=new RegExp("Firefox/(.*)"),d=g.exec(navigator.userAgent);
if(d&&d.length>=2){
var a=d[1].split(".");
if(a){c=a[0];
f=a[1];
if(parseInt(c)>0&&parseInt(f)>=5||parseInt(c)>=2)
return new Msn.Drawing.SVGGraphic(e,b)
}
}
throw new Msn.Drawing.Exception(L_GraphicsInitError_Text)
Yes, nothing but browser sniffing.. Not a single attempt at intelligent feature detection. Basically, by claiming Opera doesn't support SVG and can't load the map Microsoft is lying to the BBC and to our users.
WIDGETIZE