Hotmail Doesn't Work With Linux Firefox 2.0 396
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.
Kind of Misleading (Score:5, Insightful)
So there must be some new enhancements that maybe only subscribers get to use? Or perhaps these are more office tools that don't work in Firefox. Ok, well, before I go on, I wish someone somewhere would have pointed out that the Google apps are both free and work in Firefox. So that's sounding more and more like an easy choice/solution for Mitch Meyran's problems.
I would posit, however, that since Google's apps are probably for the most part built using GWT I'd bet that Microsoft's equivalent will be based on Silverlight. I have no idea since I have not used this but I do know that Firefox's Silverlight plugin is in beta [mozillalinks.org]. What does surprise me is that my company allows me to use Outlook Web Interface which 1) works in Linux & 2) works in Firefox 2.0. Most surprisingly it's quite slick!
So if I may state my opinion, you're probably suffering from Microsoft's attempt to assert its dominance by forcing you to use Explorer in Windows. So if they are forcing you into this ultimatum, you can either respond by bending to their will and falling into their Monopolistic strong arm practices or you can look for another solution that meets your needs. It would be an easy choice for me but you're the consumer with the money, it's your choice.
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Thats the problem with the world, without knowing the target environment, simple changes affect the end user experience in unpredictable ways. Now I am not saying go use IE, I personally hate IE and haven't used it in years, but without the plugins which can affect any aspect of the end user experience you can guarantee what your end user will see. But people will bitch all the same about things which are within their control to chan
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This is a non-story, and these kind of "stories" are making Slashdot feel more and more like digg. Microsoft leveraging their popular products to artificially limit the functionality of Linux users? SRSLY? SOMEONE ALERT THE INTERNETZ!! WE'VE GOT BREAKING NEWS! Hotmail works fine from Linux + FireFox - I too tried it last night. It's got some deprecated functionality, but that's pretty much par for the course with Microsoft-oriented webapps under Linux.
Also, exchanges like the following really d
Re:Kind of Misleading (Score:5, Insightful)
This sort of thing is totally unacceptable. First, it might even be illegal as abuse of Microsoft's monopoly (yes, Hotmail 'works' on Linux, but it works better under Microsoft's OS). Second, there is no excuse for this. Last I checked, Gmail and Yahoo mail work perfectly fine, with all functionality, on Windows, OS X and Linux. As Microsoft has more money than both of these rivals, plainly it could support Firefox under Linux. But it prefers to leverage synergy with Windows (I almost choked on the marketspeak there, but you get what I mean).
So no, that this is 'par for the course' with Microsoft does not mean it is ok, and certainly does not mean it is not worthy of a Slashdot story. It is 100% worthy, word needs to get out about this sort of thing.
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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 (Score:4)
Third, kudos on the STFU and related comments, very classy.
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Hotmail is great for throwaway e-mail addresses to be used in registration forms which require them. Create a new address, give it in the form, answer the confirmation e-mail, and never use the address again. The inevitable flood of spam isn't going to make any difference to Hotmail, considering the amount it already gets.
Hotmail is li
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I have to say that I've been reading about how slashdot isn't what it used to be ever since 5-digit UIDs were the domain of noobs. First people said people ought to head to The Well, then Kuro5hin, then Ars Technica, then Digg, then Ars Technica again... yet, here we are, still arguing, discussing and talking about what sites are better than Slashdot. I say that's a tremendous statement about how good Slashdot
Opera won a lawsuit about this kind of thing (Score:5, Informative)
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More on the Opera version... [wikipedia.org]
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Yahoo (Score:5, Insightful)
Makes you wonder what will happen if Microsoft acquires Yahoo.
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What does surprise me is that my company allows me to use Outlook Web Interface which 1) works in Linux & 2) works in Firefox 2.0. Most surprisingly it's quite slick!
Meh - I use Evolution to do that (with the exchange-connector package). I still have the corp-issued 'doze laptop, but the only use it gets nowadays is the occasional rdesktop session for some ActiveX-based web tools that some items (e.g. one of our NetApp SAN rigs) stupidly insist on.
(Now if I can only rig up Pidgin to replace Communicator, I'd be golden... :) )
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Re:Kind of Misleading (Score:5, Informative)
"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!)
Hotmail? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Hotmail? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Hotmail? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Wrong. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Hotmail? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Layne
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I agree with your statement mostly but it is such a pain in the ass to switch if everything worked for you fine. Consider that my credit card company had a web interface that I always used to make payments suddenly added a whole new flash interface that would not work with firefox/linux. It was the correct version of flash, so I figured it was the credit card company's fault
Long story short, I complained to the company and within a week or two it was fixed without me doing a thing. (no updates)
P.S. Th
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Archiving your old mail is certainly more difficult, but not impossible.
Re:Hotmail? (Score:5, Insightful)
Furthering my theory is the fact that the invites YahooGroups lists send to msn.com addresses are bounced as spam. Why would Microsoft do this? There is of course no logical reason, nor any civilized reason. One could pretend this is a competitive thing -- reject the competitor's attempt to grow their user base. More realistically msn.com bouncing perfectly reasonable email will simply cause people with msn.com addresses to abandon those addresses -- success from Microsoft's point of view.
Microsoft doesn't need people who only email. They want to push people "forward", into more "advanced" features like Live -- where they can make some actual cash. Email is passe, so why have hundreds of millions of mailboxes to worry about? Of course, this is why they dispose of user email if said user is unable to access their mailbox for a remarkably short amount of time -- a month, IIRC. I used to set reminders so that this wouldn't happen to my backup hotmail.com accounts but now I just let it happen -- useless hotmail.com mailboxes being toasted by a useless company seems appropriately bizarre.
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You geeks... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:You geeks... (Score:5, Funny)
-mcgrew
It doesn't work with the PS3's browser either (Score:4, Interesting)
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This seems desperate... (Score:5, Interesting)
"It's our email service, you have to use our browser." Fair enough - you've already driven these users away from your browser, now they're going to go ahead and move their email accounts, too. You're just alienating further those who have already realized that the Microsoft way isn't necessarily the best way.
And hey, Microsoft - people tell their friends about better services. Your competitor's services. How do you think Firefox is spreading so fast? It ain't 'cause of no "Where do you want to go today" commercials. I'm betting Gmail is going to see a nice surge in new accounts because of this.
Re:This seems desperate... (Score:5, Insightful)
Why assume it's malicious, when this sort of issue is well known to anyone who's ever tried to support multiple browsers through UA sniffing?
Re:This seems desperate... (Score:5, Funny)
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That sounds like just a fancy way of dressing up the idea of screwing
the competition by putting artificial barriers in place (like DR-DOS).
It's like Bart and Lisa Simpson wildly flailing their arms about
and then trying to abdicate responsibility for clobbering each
other when the obvious result ensues.
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How to feature sniff instead of browser sniff [sitepoint.com]
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- Robert J. Hanlon
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Layne
Re:This seems desperate... (Score:5, Interesting)
This sort of behaviour could prove to be counter-productive for Microshaft (I normally disapprove of silly joke name calling of MS, but this is a case where they deserve that epithet). If I worked for Google, I would be carefully documenting this anti-competitive behaviour of MS in web services, in order to build up an anti-trust case against MS's takeover of Yahoo.
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If they really buy Yahoo for the price they offered, they will suddenly become a few years closer to irrelevance.
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It will be a most stupendous mushroom cloud...
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I don't know anymore. I am starting to think that this just pure incompetence and lack of proper cross-platform testing.
tin foil hat time (Score:2)
Well, one set of circumstances that I can think of is this: One way that the NSA/CIA/FBI/NewBrownShirts can spy on your internet usage and email is to put a back door in the browser. If the mail service you use forces you to use that browser they also get to look at your mail. The forced browser mode of operation ensures that the spyware also sees what else you do
Re:This seems desperate... (Score:5, Insightful)
Really? That's really what you think about the people that administer a giant network used by millions of people - that they're just dumb? If there IS an oversight here, why are you assuming that it's some amateur attempt to punish Firefox users (who have been using the service happily for years now), when it's more likely just a misconfigured agent sniffer that needs to be fine tuned around the new FF version's specific appearance on a Linux box? If you, personally, are so much smarter than the software and network engineers that maintain that system, and really think that MS would not care about preventing people from using their system and seeing the advertisements there, which generate revenue, then why aren't you doing something more successful than they are? Or, are you just taking time away from whatever your "smarter than most of the staff at Microsoft" talents normally have you doing on a typical Friday? Give it a rest.
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Thank you. That reinforces my point that they (especially that division) have absolutely no interest in preventing people from seeing the ads that they serve by preventing them from using a mainstream browser while accessing the service they provide. The GP's confidence that this is a deliberate bit of sabotage to punish people not using MS platforms on their desktop is simply absurd,
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You must work in marketing.
No. I just don't have a sophomoric urge to bash MS. You don't have to be a fanboy to recognize that someone else is being one.
Miconfigured agent sniffer (Score:3, Insightful)
So it's either a dumb technical mistake, or a dumb PR/social one... and just because it may take a lot of technical skills (of many people) run run a site with millions of users, doesn't inherently mean that the "social" aspect of the skills are on par.
Also, given MS's track record, I don't really think it's unreasonab
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True. He was just referring to most of their staff. No doubt that's far more accurate, since I'm sure he actually knows most of the people that work there, and has a lot to go on, in terms of interactions with their thousands of employees.
Sniffing is an incredibly stupid approach in general, regardless of "fine-tuning". There are exceptions, but they are few and far between and that doesn't justify sniffing as a general-purpose strategy
Right
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Damn whiners (Score:5, Funny)
Sheesh.
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Hmmmm (Score:2)
Spoofing user agent is no solution (Score:5, Insightful)
Spoofing the user agent is no solution, even if it does work. That's what Micro$oft wants you to do so that it appears that more people are using IE than actually are. The numbers game is far more important than the number of users who actually use Firefox.
The best solution is to dump hotmail and move to a better free email client like Gmail or Yahoo.
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No, the best solution is to not use a so-called "free email client" at all, and get a real email account with a real ISP. There is no such thing as a free lunch, you always end up paying for it in one way or another. The difference is that with a so-called "free" email account, you have no control over the way you pay, and you might -- no: will -- eventually end up being fucked over.
Not surprising (Score:5, Informative)
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?
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Leveraging your market position in one product "Exchange/OWA" to gain market position in
another "IE"...simple really
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Leveraging your market position in one product "Exchange/OWA" to gain market position in
another "IE"...simple really
Back when this OWA issue first came about, Firefox (which wasn't even called Firefox at the time, I don't think) was still mostly relegated to the nerdy group. Most people using Firefox as an alternative to IE actually knew about the User Agent, and were rather apt at changing it so they could still access OWA normally.
Fast-forward to today, and more people are using Firefox, but could probably just as easily get around the OWA issue but asking the guy that's been doing it for 5-6 years. It just seems
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Even that could be done by distributions like Ubuntu by default.
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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 p
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again with the user agent excludes? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:again with the user agent excludes? (Score:5, Funny)
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Didn't Opera respond to this with something that made all the MSN pages into Swedish Chef talk? It was probably the most popular download Opera ever provided for a few days.
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http://slashdot.org/articles/03/02/14/1256231.shtml?tid=133 [slashdot.org]
http://www.opera.com/pressreleases/en/2003/02/14/ [opera.com]
Unlike a great many technology companies, Opera ASA have a superb sense of humour, and managed to go mad and get even ($12m payout from MS). Shame that the download no longer seems to be available, but pretty sure I have a copy on my hard drive somewhere.
Nor with Opera (Score:5, Insightful)
The only way to reply to messages is to choose "plain text" instead of rich text. Rich text is the default, but you are not able to type anything. So, choose plain text. Except that when you do that, a random half of the time, Hotmail erases your entire message.
In order to use Hotmail with any ability with Opera, Ive had to develop a several step workaround, just to reply to email. Thats one (more) reason why the upcoming Yahoo/MS merger worries me. If Yahoo mail goes the way of Hotmail, my workaround will move from occasional to every single damn time.
Hotmail, huh? (Score:3, Funny)
Related to last week (Score:2)
It was answered with "User Agent".
I answered that with "spoofing" noting the number of moronically designed web sites that check the user agent and if it isn't IE on Windows tells you to "upgrade to a modern browser".
I
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It is a simple case of marketing driving the development process.
It is called leveraging your position in one product, in this case hotmail to better
your position in another in this case "IE"....
In case you have not been around the last 10-15 years, they are masters at this.
*sniff*sniff* (Score:2)
Yahoo! Trainwreck Coming (Score:5, Insightful)
The Internet itself is a hothouse for competition. The global environment for megacorps, though, is precisely the opposite. When the business drives the apps, which it always will at that scale, the Internet's flexibility will become a hothouse for monopolies. Since the entire world depends on the Internet, that Internet monoculture must be stopped. That's why people have governments: to stop the ambitious among them from exploiting advantages that hurt everyone else.
There is every evidence that Microsoft's control of Yahoo would be a disaster, and no evidence that it would be good for anyone but Microsoft (and maybe the Yahoo shareholders they buy off). If the deal goes through, that's the proof that the people need to change our governments to actually protect us, instead of serving these monopolies.
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So, um, how do you have dominance over a monopoly?
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MISLEADING! Worked this AM for me. (Score:3, Informative)
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Not only that, the POP server works too. I've been using Apple mail (and thunderbird on the other machine) to check my hotmail (msn) accounts for a long while..
Sounds like the article writer should have gotten off his high horse and asked what was involved in getting hotmail to work with Outlook express.
Instead he throws a tantrum like a little child...
Anti competition anybody? (Score:4, Insightful)
When did this happen? (Score:2, Interesting)
For no good reason (Score:2)
This is either laziness or maliciousness. They should if nothing else use their user agent sniffing to determine which browser and then send you the appropriate UI... if the BETA UI only works on IE RIGHT NOW but they plan to make it work on FF and others SOON, then this is t
It's the 1980's all over again (Score:2)
Microsoft isn't the only one doing this (Score:5, Insightful)
Web "developers" are simply dumb. That's all. Yes, this suddenly turns into a huge story because it's Microsoft. But, even in that case, I wouldn't be surprised if this is just somebody they hired in a low level position being ignorant.
Hotmail's for junk only (Score:2)
The point is moot though since I only use Hotmail when I'm signing up for a forum or a competition. I really don't want my email filled up with fake lottery emails and rubbish written in (what appears to be) Spanish.
Past 30+ years, Microsoft a selfish brat (Score:4, Insightful)
If the way Microsoft did business is very good, right, and moral, then why not teach this to our kids in our schools? Lacking in creativity? getting bad grades? Pay off your teacher. Buy your way through school through manipulation, power, and influence. Isn't that what Microsoft has done in the real world, except they have bought their way through the government enough to dispell public scrutiny? If we let Microsoft do this, are we not doing our kids a disservice because we are not teaching them the way the world is? Maybe the correct way is not democracy, but to make as much money as possible, any way you can, buying your way through life, and forgetting people who have less power than you?
If we would let Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer take over the world, I would have to say, your free speech would be removed, you would have to pay to post your words here on Slashdot, and your words would of course be censored, and only speech that would glorify Microsoft's cause as long as Bill and Steve could use it propaganda for their empire. They are no different than one country trying to take over the world. There are governments in their way and they will be dealt with accordingly.
Your choice. Freedom or Bondage. I want freedom. In everything I do, I do those things that promote those ideals. In regards to computing, I use a lot of Open Source software, like Linux and Mac OS X, Open Office, and Firefox (stuff Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer do not want me to use because it does not suit their purposes) not closed source garbage, like MS-Windows, Microsoft Office, or Internet Explorer (stuff that would lock me in to giving Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer perpetual money without them having to earn it from me.)
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Soapbox (Score:2)
So what? (Score:2)
No, *This* is the Simple Solution... (Score:2)
Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)
the real solution is even simpler (Score:4, Insightful)
It's not the first time they did this! (Score:3, Informative)
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...
Who uses Hotmail with Firefox on Linux? (Score:4, Funny)
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I have experienced this too. It does this on the Mac too. Luckily I have Webkit as backup (even if it is a nightly) and at home I just use the IMAP client. They blame it on certain plugins, but these are all disactivated for Google web sites
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