Hotmail Doesn't Work With Linux Firefox 2.0

An anonymous reader tips a column up at freesoftwaremagazine.com in which the writer discovers that the latest UI enhancements that Hotmail has recently introduced don't work with Firefox 2.0 under Linux. The writer concludes that the webmail interface has been artificially limited by basic user-agent sniffing. The solution is simple enough — spoofing the User Agent that Firefox reports.

Not surprising

[Oxy the moron]

IIRC, Outlook Web Access has done this for at least the past 5-6 years. Load OWA in Firefox (Windows or Linux), and it looks all choppy with bad frames and images and such. Change the User Agent, and it magically looks almost identical to the same page in IE!

I find it funny that Microsoft goes to these ends... what do you gain by doing that? Do they claim it's because other browers don't work?

Re:Kind of Misleading

[ewoods]

I have problems with hotmail on windows with FF2. When the enhanced page first loads, it loops in a javascript and hangs the browser. This happens almost every time. And because the FF people apparently don't know how to show the "stop script" dialog and actually pause the script so I can click the button, it usually takes me several minutes to get into my hotmail with continuous clicking of the "stop script" button. It's made hotmail unusable, so I switched to yahoo... And not microsoft has the opportunity to break that, too. Antitrust officials? Bah... They're ignorant or this shit wouldn't happen.

Re:Hotmail?

[SQLGuru]

If you have had Hotmail for years, then you probably were grandfathered in to the Outlook plug in....I read my Hotmail in Outlook and have for YEARS. Of course, that's the Windows version of Outlook, so I don't really have the problem with the web client not working, either. But it makes for a much better interface than either web version.

Layne

Re:What about all those "Wal-Mart" computer buyers

[Anonymous Coward]

last time i checked XP doesn't install from disk if there is a previous linux install - at least without a manual partition adjustment.

MISLEADING! Worked this AM for me.

[Tsu Dho Nimh]

Firefox, Ubuntu ... no problem opening it and getting mail. If there were enhancements, I don't care. It's a mail system, not a video game.

Re:Not surprising

[gad_zuki!]

>Load OWA in Firefox (Windows or Linux), and it looks all choppy with bad frames and images and such.

Err no. OWA for non-ie browsers is simplified. OWA for IE is pretty much IE-only. You can change the agent string but then its buggy as all hell. Granted, MS could go out of its way to make the non-ie version more robust, but as a corporation they would be helping their competitors.

So theyre not claiming other browsers dont work, but that if you dont use their product youre going to get the simplified page. I dont condone it but its not a bug or bad coding, its obviously a management decision to only provide basic funationality to non-ie clients.

Opera won a lawsuit about this kind of thing

[Anonymous Coward]

Remember when MS skewed pages being viewed by Opera, but if you told Opera to identify as IE, they'd work just fine? Opera won their lawsuit against MS for that. Perhaps another lawsuit should be in the works.

Re:Reclaim the web again.

[Shados]

It already does: XBAP applications. Windows only and all, thats why the .NET community pushed them hard to make Silverlight 2 (which was originally going to be much, much more limited than it is)

Re:Kind of Misleading

[kripkenstein]

yes, Hotmail 'works' on Linux, but it works better under Microsoft's OS

So does the Department of Justice need to declare Apple a monopoly within the online music and entertainment market in order for this same problem to apply to iTunes and QuickTime, both of which "work" on Windows, but work better on Mac OS X?

If Apple had a monopoly in OS X, then yes, certainly the DoJ would need to do precisely that.

Monopolies have different rules that apply to them.

Re:Kind of Misleading

[Zymergy]

The Author FTA said it best:
"Conclusion
All things said, I prefer Gmail."

Hotmail has a nasty habit of deleting all of your email if you fail to login at least once every 30 days.
I vacationed and forgot to login... lost 5+ years worth of email (thankfully, I mirrored important messages to Yahoo)..
'Hotmail of Borg' was "kind enough" to not delete my contacts or account, but they were "sorry" that all of my email was deleted. Nothing to see here move along....
Now, I have been very happily using Gmail since 2004 (but I do have a free Yahoo account that has 8+ years worth of emails also. Redundancy good.)
Hotmail is now totally obsolete IMHO and they treat their customers like dog crap. This is obviously planned by Microsoft. They are about to buy Yahoo to "try" to compete. The mass Exodus (Migration) of all of my Yahoo Email is already underway in preparation for the great FUBARing to come once Microsoft obtains Yahoo and incorporates it into their collective.

I use Gmail 99% of the time now. Thank you Google! (If only Google would now write a compatible OS to make MS Windows obsolete, (even if left beta for years) I'd still buy it!)

Wrong.

[LKM]

Look, I've been using smartphones since the P800i. I've used Symbian phones, Palm phones and even (for very short amounts of time) Windows CE phones. THEY ALL FUCKING SUCK. This sounds harsh, even crass, but it is unfortunately the truth. Nothing to do with marketing or spin or anything like this. The iPhone is the only phone I've ever owned that I don't hate. Not because it has more features or because it is prettier or anything like that, but simply because it works, it doesn't crash, and it's easy to use. It doesn't make me jump through hoops to enter appointments, it doesn't force me to enter tons of data to join a wireless network, it doesn't come with crappy sync software which never works. It just works exactly like a smartphone should work, and that is why there is no alternative to the iPhone. No other smartphone works as well.

It's not the first time they did this!

[AlgorithMan]

in may 2007 MS improved maps.live.com (added higher resolution images)
the service didn't work with firefox under linux either, unless you fooled it by using "user agent switcher"!

here's the link (in german though)
http://www.heise.de/newsticker/foren/S-Geht-ueberhaupt-nicht-unter-Linux-grundlos-und-irrefuehrende-Fehlermeldung/forum-117910/msg-12830126/read/

if you ask me, this cries for a lawsuit for anti-competitive behaviour...