Iceweasel quickie, hopefully.
 

Hi,

I've moved from Slackware to Debian 4.0 when it was released & am liking it. I've got one wee problem though; Iceweasel can't access online banking as it isn't a supported browser. Firefox used to manage the website in question fine. It looks like Iceweasel identifies itself as such, rather than just pretending to call itself Firefox to the wider-world, as I suspect it could do if it wanted to. I couldn't find anywhere in it though to make it pretend to be another browser (even IE, ...euuugh), I'm sure I've seen this in previous browsers. I managed to find this option in Konqueror easily enough, although that didnt seem to get me any further. That is to say rather than giving the 'unsupported browser' it give me a 'service temporarily unavailable'. I'll check to see whether this is really the case or not, but I'd prefer to use Iceweasel & don't want to mess around chaning to Firefox (I'm not concerned about the logo etc issue, its just that I'd like to use what Debian provides). I searched around but haven't got anywhere with solving this yet, any help would be appreciated.

Thanks.

I'm not sure this will work, but you can try going to about:config in the address bar, then filter for general.useragent.extra.firefox.

http://releases.mozilla.org/pub/mozi...2.0.0.3.tar.gz

and install libstdc++.so.5 (i think that is the right name)

Thanks very much for the help, the suggestion about the about:config did the trick. I rekon this sort of identity morphing option should really be available via the menus (maybe I'm totally blind but I searched on a few separate occasions), as it is within Konqueror. I was then able to get onto the online banking site fine. :twocents: Thanks again cgjones.

Okie, I was trying to avoid that sort of solution seing as this is Debian an' all. ;) Easy enough though it is for a Slackware user of enough years experience... from before it provided Firefox packages, I think.

Note for reference: The about:config parameter change was simply from Iceweasel/2.0.0.3 to Firefox/2.0.0.3, I even went into Window$ to check this.

I did a quick search to verify this, and it looks like there might be some extensions that would allow you to change the user agent string more easily. I don't personally use any extensions though, so I'm not sure if Firefox extensions would work with Iceweasel. It might be worth a try.

The closest thing I found was something called IE View for bringing up an IE tab within Firefox, but then I realised it was Window$-only extension. I'll get by with the above fix, but many many people must come across this sort of problem using Iceweasel if it is always identifying itself as such as my major bank didnt like it.

EDIT: More - searching with the 'useragent' I found an extension:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/59
it installs fine and provides an little sub-menu within tools that'd probably acheive the same thing. It comes with three options though; IE6, Netscape 4.8, Opera 8.51. The previos fix is neater and doesn't require an extension, but I'll keep it in in case some nasty site doesn't even line Firefox.

Thanks agian.

cgjones

You are a genius

Respect is due...

This bank website is seriously broken if it has to only allow some browsers.

I would send an email to the webmasters explaining them to re-think their website..

Which bank is it you are trying to access? This fix now allows me to access Natwest without having to use firefox 1.5 anymore.

Its not eactly a minnow bank either; Royal Bank of Scotland. I just dutifully sent an email form to inform them of this, but it wasnt a secure website so i didnt put real identity details. I wonder how much Iceweasel with deviate from Firefox as if it does become incompatible (why should browsers even differ, you'd think theere weren't any standards, sheesh).

Seeing how my job is web developement I had to post. You said it. There are not any standards. Well, technically there are, but different browsers seem to read these standards differently than others. The standards are found at http://www.w3.org/. IE is notorious for not following these standards. IE7 is their first attempt at following these standards and they did a decent job, but its far from perfect. Hopefully IE8 will become more standards compliance.

Firefox I have found is THE standards compliance browser. No other browser out there is so perfect. Not even Mozilla, or Opera. You can code a 100% w3 compliant website and It will look the way you want it to in Firefox, but will vary in all other browsers. Mozilla, Safari, Opera are all browsers that do a good job, but they have flaws. IE7 is comparable to Mozilla, but not as good. IE6 and below, just forget about it. Your site will look as though you threw it up against a wall a few times (literally).

60% of the internet browsing world still uses IE (only 10% uses IE7). Next in line is Firefox with 30%. Seeing how most of the world uses a faulty browser, web developers have to program faulty websites. It is a lot harder to code different versions of your site and merge them together so they work one way on one browser, and another way on a different browser. Most companies will cover a handful of sites and support them (mostly IE5+, Firefox, Opera7+, and Mozilla). The rest of the browsers get locked out.

I have made sites that block out all sorts of browsers, but by far my favorite browsers to block out are IE6 and below. I get a huge kick out of that. Anyone can easily upgrade to IE7 with MS Updates, or they can switch to a more standards browser like Firefox. But sadly, a lot of companies don't have the same views as me. Too bad :/