AOL Doesn't Like Opera



  • Seems like this a common thing nowadays... websites not recognizing that Opera 9.1 is an updated browser.

    When visiting a link to a news.aol.com article that my wife sent me, it gave me this:

    Please Upgrade Your Web Browser

    Your Web browser does not meet the necessary requirements to access this content.

    AOL recommends upgrading to improve your overall online experience. Download the latest version of Netscape Navigator or Microsoft Internet Explorer.

    You may also proceed without upgrading, however some content may not be accessible or display properly. Continue without upgrading.


    When I used FireFox 1.5, it didn't give me this message.



  • AOL = (Internet + TrainingWheels) - BrainCells



  • In all fairness, it's not AOL, its the websites in the AOL network. I use / have used moviefone.com for the sake of finding movie times, simply because it's something I can remember, and because I didn't know that google now does movie times (it does!)

    Fortunately, I no longer need to spoof my UA, since they added a "Click here to continue, though you might experience degraded functionality" link, which lets me use the site just fine.

    This isn't a WTF so much as AOL being "lazy" and not wanting to make sure that the page looks perfect in browsers other than the big two, and having people bitch about it when it doesn't. I can't honestly blame them; look at the market share for Opera.



  • @Volmarias said:

    AOL being "lazy" and not wanting to make sure that the page looks perfect in browsers other than the big two

    Netscape is still considered one of the two most commonly used browsers? 



  • People still use opera???



  • @Morbii said:

    People still use opera???


    I tried it years ago and didn't like it. However, it's pretty good now. It also beats out FireFox on standards compliance.. go figure.



  • @codemoose said:

    AOL = (Internet + TrainingWheels) - BrainCells


    That's why I'm not on it. She uses it because her not-so-savvy friends insist on using it.. that and MySpace.



  • Yahoo doesn't like Safari 3.0 (part of OS X 10.5 beta). I get this:

     

    Why miss out?
    To see all the new Yahoo! home page has to offer, please upgrade to a more recent browser.

    Supported browsers include:
    Internet Explorer 7 optimized by Yahoo!
    Firefox 1.5
    Safari 2.0
    Opera 8.5

     Not that I mind - so long as it thinks I have an unsupported browser, I don't see all the cruft (news, more news, lots of pictures, adverts, more news) - I see a field to enter search terms and that's it.



  • ...and of course the new version of "Netscape Navigator" (sorry, I just HAVE to use quotes here) is actually a run of the mill interface to the IE engine.



  • this is what happens when you use crappy browser detection instead of object detection.



  • I believe Opera includes a pretty long list of sites that it spoofs the user agent to by default.



  • @Dragnslcr said:

    @Volmarias said:

    AOL being "lazy" and not wanting to make sure that the page looks perfect in browsers other than the big two

    Netscape is still considered one of the two most commonly used browsers? 

     

    Netscape runs on the Mozilla engine, so whenever they look for Netscape, it also recognizes Mozilla. So it's really IE and Mozilla, but the large corporations call it Netscape. 



  • @Cap'n Steve said:

    I believe Opera includes a pretty long list of sites that it spoofs the user agent to by default.

    Not all at once. Opera defaults to its correct UA. You DO know how UA spoofing works, right?



  • @Morbii said:

    People still use opera???


    Yes. I do. Instead of having Firefox, Thunderbird and ChatZilla taking away half of my application bar, I can just have Opera do it all with tabs. I love it.



  • Safari 3.0 is not released yet, therefore does not count. Betas and other such versions are never supported until the final version is released



  • @Morbii said:

    People still use opera???

    Yes. It's faster than Firefox, with features that work out of the box instead of having to find and install (adblock, mouse gestures, UA Spoofing from the quick menu, "fast forward", the ability to disable java/flash/javascript/animated gifs on the fly). I've been using Opera for several years, and I recommend it to everyone.



  • @Volmarias said:

    @Cap'n Steve said:
    I believe Opera includes a pretty long list of sites that it spoofs the user agent to by default.
    Not all at once. Opera defaults to its correct UA. You DO know how UA spoofing works, right?


    Well, here's an excerpt from Opera\profile\ua.ini, which looks like it matches the values you can set for spoofing in opera:config, it's not as big as I remembered, though:

    Opera Preferences version 2.0
    ; Do not edit this file while Opera is running
    ; This file is stored in UTF-8 encoding

    [Identity]
    www.opera.com=1
    pncbank.com=4
    online.wellsfargo.com=4
    gmail.google.com=1
    gmail.com=1
    msdn.microsoft.com=2
    nwolb.com=3
    espn.go.com=1
    www.sony.com=0
    apple.com=1
    rolex.com=1
    mail.google.com=1
    disney.go.com=1
    looksmart.com=3
    slate.com=5
    present.hiof.no=5
    webmail.aol.com=3
    deutsche-bank.de=5
    netmarble.net=3
    pcbuilder.alternate.de=3
    sayclub.com=3
    mac.com=4
    launch.yahoo.com=1
    washingtonpost.com=1
    scandinavian.net=5



  • @Volmarias said:

    @Morbii said:
    People still use opera???

    Yes. It's faster than Firefox, with features that work out of the box instead of having to find and install (adblock, mouse gestures, UA Spoofing from the quick menu, "fast forward", the ability to disable java/flash/javascript/animated gifs on the fly). I've been using Opera for several years, and I recommend it to everyone.

     It really is a top of the line browser... if they would have ditched their banner ad and pay per version crap years ago they would probably have more of a following now-a-days however, I to use it... but my primary is still firefox due to the developer extensions like Firebug and the Web Developer Tool Bar. 
     



  • I've been using Opera for several years, and I recommend it to everyone.

    Opera is a very cool browser, but I use text-scaling a lot, and full page zooming doesn't do the right thing: horizontal scrollbars (Of Death) or vertically squashed text, scaled images. Bah. Same goes for IE7, though I think IE7 has some algorithms in place to try and prevent HSODs as far as it can (which isn't very far).

    Page zooming remains a highly impractical and more often than not [i]counterproductive[/i] method of increasing page readability.

    Firefox remains my browsywowsy.



  • @dhromed said:

    Page zooming remains a highly impractical and more often than not [i]counterproductive[/i] method of increasing page readability.

    Really? I can't stand how other browsers zoom some things and not others.


    Wallsy.



  • @chadillac said:

    It really is a top of the line browser... if they would have ditched their banner ad and pay per version crap years ago they would probably have more of a following now-a-days however, I to use it... but my primary is still firefox due to the developer extensions like Firebug and the Web Developer Tool Bar.


    That's one of the big reasons I abandoned Opera in the beginning. At that time, I used Netscape. I used MSIE after Netscape went down the tube. Then I went to FireFox. I've used it ever since. The extensions are what I really love. However, now if I'm not doing anything that requires the extensions, I use Opera. It has been much faster and it provides more feedback on what it's doing than just an hourglass cursor.



  • @Wallsy said:

    @dhromed said:
    Page zooming remains a highly impractical and more often than not [i]counterproductive[/i] method of increasing page readability.

    Really? I can't stand how other browsers zoom some things and not others.Wallsy.

    When you zoom TDFTW front page in Opera, the sidebar also scales and begins to take up a lot of space -- space that is wasted because I never actually read the sidebar.

    Because the font also gets bigger, the amount of words per line decreases. In Opera, it decreases to an uncomfortably small number of words per line*. FFX, because it doesn't scale the sidebar, retains proper readability of the main column of text.

    And that's basically the negative effect of zooming. Uninteresting stuff becomes inflated (such as images, sidebars, menus) and gets in the way of reading the text -- which is why you zoomed in the first place. I never zoom to increase page size. I can see the page just fine. It's the 12px text that's hard to read across the breadth of the entire screen.

    I could post some screenshots of textual sites that I enjoy eading with BIG TEXT in FFX, if that's helpful. :)

    *) gee, dhromed, what fucking zoom level [i]do[/i] you use? [i]Well, sir, I'm on 1600*1200 and 50cm removed from my screen, so a zoom of 150-250% is quite normal.[/i]


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