Bug#484121: tasksel: let's sync on the GNOME task

[Eric Dorland]

* Mike Hommey (mh at glandium.org) wrote:
> On Tue, Jun 24, 2008 at 03:25:08AM -0400, Eric Dorland wrote:
> > * Joey Hess (joeyh at debian.org) wrote:
> > > Eric Dorland wrote:
> > > > Well I think Google generally does treat the Iceweasel user agent
> > > > properly.
> > > 
> > > Not in the case of maps.google.com, where the sidebar cannot be hidden
> > > in iceweasel, can in firefox.
> > > 
> > > > > I'm afraid that documenting it in README.Debian won't help desktop users
> > > > > who just find that this strange "iceweasel" browser we install by
> > > > > default doesn't work on sites that firefox works on.
> > > > 
> > > > Could we do it in a more prominent perhaps?  
> > > 
> > > FWIW, I got from the README.Debian to #354622, but I was unable to from
> > > there figure out how to quickly and easily change the user agent.
> > > 
> > > A more prominent thing might be a hyperlink directly to the relevant
> > > about:config setting from the default start page .. or a pre-installed
> > > user agent switcher that has firefox in it as an option. I think that
> > > something like that would go a certian distance to making it accessible
> > > to users, though it would still be a bother.
> > 
> > I thought about this this week and I've come to agree with Joey's
> > position.
> > 
> > We could document exactly how to change the useragent for the user,
> > but why wouldn't they do this? From there perspective there are all
> > upsides and no downsides to making the useragent be Firefox, And if
> > everyone is going to mechanically change it (or want to change it),
> > then it's not really a good default.
> > 
> > While I agree that websites shouldn't be abusing useragent strings the
> > way they do, we can't win this fight on our own and in the mean time
> > our users are getting broken results that are in our power to fix.
> > 
> > Thoughts?
> 
> We have plenty other browsers that are not Firefox and don't try to
> claim to be Firefox...

In the case of Iceweasel it is in fact 99.9% Firefox, so claiming it's
Firefox isn't much of a stretch.

As much as we would like it not to be so, even people who should know
better are not handling non-Firefox useragent strings correctly. We
can present the user with documentation on how to change the useragent
string, but why wouldn't they change it? There's no downside from
there perspective, sites just work better. If the user should always
set this themselves, then it should be the default.

-- 
Eric Dorland <eric at kuroneko.ca>
ICQ: #61138586, Jabber: hooty at jabber.com

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