The first thing to try is to see whether Safari can display the page by spoofing as another browser (choosing from the User Agent submenu in the Debug menu). If this succeeds, then it is presumably a mistake on the site's part to block Safari. Apple does try to convince webmasters of important sites to make them work better with Safari, and this seems like it would fall into this category. We keep track of sites like this currently in Radar, so probably the best option would be to file a bug at bugreporter.apple.com rather than in the Bugzilla database. On the other hand, if Safari still can't display the page when spoofing with a different User Agent, then it is presumably being blocked because the site developers couldn't get the site to work correctly with Safari. This could be a bug or missing standards support in WebKit, in which case a Bugzilla bug would be appropriate. Or it could be that the site is using some non-standards-based browser-specific technology, in which case there is less chance that a fix in WebKit will help. But if you're not sure, it's worthwhile to file a bug in Bugzilla and then you or someone else can try to reduce the problem down small enough that it's obvious whether it's a WebKit problem or a non-standards-based site issue. John On Jul 3, 2005, at 10:39 AM, David Storey wrote:
Should a bug be reported if a site uses browser sniffing? I wanted to watch the webcasts of Live 8, but the AOL site that handles them brings up "We're sorry, Safari is not currently available. We recommend AOL Client or Firefox . Check back for more LIVE 8!"
I has a quick look at the source and there were a number of if (! isSafari) statements in the code. I'm not sure if they are there cause it wasn't working in safari or for political reasons. It would be a strange choice to block safari when there is an iTunes + iPod ad on the page and aol has/had a deal with itms. Its frustrating as it seems to use windows media player, so if you open it in firefox it just says the plug in is missing and so can;t play it (unlike safari that usually opens the standalone player).
If it should be submitted as a bug, i'll try to look further at the source code and do a reduction with what is wrong.
Thanks,
David _______________________________________________ webkit-dev mailing list webkit-dev@opendarwin.org http://www.opendarwin.org/mailman/listinfo/webkit-dev