HowDidIDo.co.uk blocks all non-MS software.

Posted September 30th, 2005, 5:05 pm

A few hours ago, I was visiting the website of the golf club my father is a member of,
and found a link to a third party site that lists results of recent competitions that've
held at this club, alongside results for other clubs.

Clicking the link instantly redirected my browser (Seamonkey 1.0a) to a nearly
blank page, that contained the following message in the middle of the page:

This site can only be viewed on PC's with Internet
Explorer v4 or Higher, with Javascript enabled.

So, as I always do in cases like this, I temporarily spoofed the user agent string of
my browser to masquerade as IE6. But, it appears this site has some particularly
vicious browser sniffing in operation. It saw right through the disguise, and
redirected me straight back to the page with the blocker message.

At the moment, my PC is out of action, so I'm only able to use my Mac to go
online. Which means that site is 100% unavailable to me at the moment,
as it blocks non-MS operating systems as well as non-IE browsers.

Eitherway, I've tested it in all the browsers I have installed on this Mac.

Gecko based:
Seamonkey 1.0a - Firefox 1.0.7 + 1.5b1 - Camino 1.0a

Non-Gecko based:
Safari 1.3 - Shiira 1.1 - Opera 8.5 - MSIE 5.2.3

The site briefly worked in MSIE 5.2.3 for Mac, but that crashed after a few seconds!

The site in question is called HowDidIDo.co.uk. Click here to (attempt) a visit!

I've reported this issue using the built-in Reporter tool in Seamonkey,
and also using the "bug button" in Safari as well. Would it be worth
filing a Tech Evangelism bug report on BugZilla as well for this?

Posted September 30th, 2005, 5:26 pm

The awful part is that the site would probably work in Firefox.
Yes, a tech evangelism bug would be in order, but only AFTER contacting the webmaster to complain.

Here's the e-mail I found:
admin@howdidido.co.uk

A nice letter explaining that they are losing 10-20% of all possible visitors by blocking non-IE AND non-Windows folks would be most productive. I'd be interested to see how they'd respond.

Posted September 30th, 2005, 5:55 pm

The error I get in the JavaScript console for that page is that the procedure named in the <body onLoad> attribute is not defined. If I remove the word void from in front of function storeSession() then the error goes away and the test page proceeds to the next page. Of course, I can't make that change on the server side to see what happens next. ;-)

Posted September 30th, 2005, 6:14 pm

Considering that even the source for that first page is a horrific explosion of What The Web Might Have Been, I don't think this is going anywhere fast. Every bit of js on the whole site is going to be full of this garbage.

The site, by the way, consists of frames, tables and a lot of ASP redirects. Gorgeous.

I don't think there's a quick fix for this.

- Chris

Posted September 30th, 2005, 8:42 pm

jonnyq wrote:The awful part is that the site would probably work in Firefox.
Yes, a tech evangelism bug would be in order, but only AFTER
contacting the webmaster to complain.

Here's the e-mail I found:
admin@howdidido.co.uk

A nice letter explaining that they are losing 10-20% of all possible visitors
by blocking non-IE AND non-Windows folks would be most productive.
I'd be interested to see how they'd respond.

Are any of those sample tech evangelism letters still available anywhere? And what's
the likelyhood that it'll actually get a proper response, rather than the unusual sort
of standard "we might fix it, but to be honest we can't bothered" reply?

Posted October 1st, 2005, 6:03 am

The site will need to be completely rewritten to make sure it's going to work: it's been put together with no regard at all for other browsers so there could be dozens of pitfalls hidden in there altogether.

The stock sample letter is still up at the evangelism page, but it really is a form letter. Unless they're getting bombarded with these I don't see that letter helping much.

- Chris

Posted October 1st, 2005, 10:24 am

Hmm, seems like the tech evangelism letter would not to be revised and updated in several places
by the person sending it, especially since some of the references within, are effectively obsolete.

And like you said, the site in question is a complete and utter shambolic mess, that needs to be
dragged kicking and screaming back to the drawing board, and totally overhauled from scratch.

I think in this case, the best option would be go straight in, and file a TE bug report about it.

Posted October 1st, 2005, 11:59 am

Hahaha! It doesn't even let me use Internet Explorer 6 in WINE on Linux. What is it doing to detect the browser? Does it work with ActiveX disabled?

Posted October 2nd, 2005, 5:24 am

Since WINE emulates the codebase of Windows 9x, perhaps their sniffer is restricting access
to Windows NT5+ (2000/xp/2003/Vista). Since there's still a substantial number of people
using the old Windows 9x series, then how many visitors does this site (not) want?!?

Posted October 2nd, 2005, 7:05 am

The site works for me on Win98SE with IE6.

Posted October 4th, 2005, 1:59 pm

BugZilla Tech Evangelism bug #311115 has now been submitted . . .

Posted October 4th, 2005, 2:38 pm

That's the sort of web author who, in a just world, would be executed by firing squad.

Posted October 4th, 2005, 2:43 pm

I don't have time right now, but with a greasemonkey script, you might be able to redefine the storeSession function to get this to partially work.

Posted October 5th, 2005, 2:40 pm

I just tried to email admin@howdidido.co.uk and got back the following message:
'
This is an automatically generated Delivery Status Notification

Delivery to the following recipient failed permanently:

admin@howdidido.co.uk

Technical details of permanent failure:
PERM_FAILURE: SMTP Error (state 9): 550 Unrouteable address'

Hmmmm, I wonder what happened, think they've left or something?

Posted October 5th, 2005, 3:43 pm

Well, given that they've already shown their technical cluelessness in the way they set up the site, maybe they just don't have a clue about how to keep a mail server running correctly either.

HowDidIDo.co.uk blocks all non-MS software.

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