changing check for "supported browsers"?

[mhanisch]

Hi *,

we're running a couple of debian workstations in the office and since recently
these users are all unable to open webmail:
A while ago, "firefox" in debian was replaced by "iceweasel" and SWA does not recognize this as a compatible browser.

Since firefox and "iceweasel" are pretty much equal as far as the functionality is concerned,
"supporting " iceweasel as well is just a matter of adding one additional name in the
browser detection code in SWA.
But the question is - where do I find this code?

I noticed some javascript file containing browser/version checks in /opt/scalix-tomcat/webapps/webmail, but this file is named b6be00688ca77af0.js which looks like it is some kind of temporary file.

BTW, I'm running Scalix 10.0.3.1 at the moment.

Any hints would be appreciated.

Thanks in advance,
Michael.

P.S. Check http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IceWeasel# ... l_features to see the differences in the feature sets of firefox/iceweasel

[TheDude]

While you wait for somebody to tell you how to add Ice Weasel to the script check (don't hold your breath, that sounds like a lot of work) you might consider installing Firefox on those boxes or alternately you could upgrade to 11.1 and change the browser redirect to send them to the mobile client (that will load fine on "the weasel" allowing them minimal, yet functional access)

Instructs: viewtopic.php?t=5434

Good Luck and I hope somebody does step up with the code, I could use it as well!

The Dude

[florian]

For the time being, we have no plans to include Iceweazel in the browser check.

The point with this is simple - the debian folks have not only changed the branding, but also started doing code changes to the browser. See http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/21736 ... zilla-bugs
for examples. Therefore, to support Iceweazel, we would need to run a full QA cycle on it. Based on market share for IW, I don't think this will happen anytime soon.

It would most likely work, but you never know. For those wanting to try, the recommendation is to use the UserAgentSwitcher plugin and get the thing to call itself as it should. Please note that this is not supported and "at own risk".

If you ask me for my personal opinion (as Florian, not as Florian, Scalix), the debian project have shot themselves in the foot by doing this, it's not at all a good idea and it will have massive negative impact on the use of debian on the desktop. Meanwhile the members of the Ubuntu project and Microsoft marketing folks are shaking their heads over all this nonsense. [And yes, I've read what's been written about the motivation to do all this, but it's by no means pragmatic... sorry!]

And no, I'm not going to use IceW, no matter on what platform.

Florian.

[mhanisch]

I definitely agree that forking firefox was not a particularly smart thing to do...
However, that's what's part of the debian distro these days.
I wasn't aware that they started doing other changes besides branding/graphics, and of course that changes the situation.

If I understand you right, I should not expect added support for iceweasel any time soon, so I'll see if we can work around this. Still, if there are any hints about getting this to work unsupported ,I'd still be interested in hearing them.

[florian]

Sorry, I thought that the information was in my response, as per above.

The difference that SWA sees is the UserAgent string... to see what your browser sends, just go to http://www.useragentstring.com/ and it will analyze.

Firefox 2.0 on my Mac sends

Code: Select all

Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X; en-US; rv:1.8.1.1) Gecko/20061204 Firefox/2.0.0.1

So the first thing you need is a proper UserAgent string that SWA is ok with. In this case, you'd probably want a Firefox running on Linux and see what this produces. When you then check with Iceweazel, it will have a changed string - not sure what exactly the debian brothers did, please check.

You will then have to tell your IW (doesn't it look similar to IE? ) to not use it's built-in string, but the one you've discovered from FF. You can do this using an Extension called the UserAgentSwitcher, available from Mozilla (hoping that FF Extensions still run on IW?). This will add a menu item when you can set the UserAgent string.

Hope this helps,
Florian.

P.S. Once you have discovered all this, you can post the strings to this thread if you want to, for others to find. Note that this still does not make IW supported for Scalix, so if you encounter any issues with it, please try to reproduce it on a "genuine" FF browser before opening up a support case.

[marcdm]

Just a few notes here, when I try to sign-in to webmail or sac I get the same message about the unsupported browser as well.

However, there's something I need to point out. Scalix seems to be checking for the name firefox in the UserAgent string. That's a bad idea. Firefox and hundreds of other browsers use the same Gecko rendering engine.

The version number for this rendering engine as shown in the example Florian provided in

Code: Select all

Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X; en-US; rv:1.8.1.1) Gecko/20061204 Firefox/2.0.0.1

is Gecko rv:1.8.1.1.

Now, SWA and SAC say they want Firefox 1.0 or higher. The UserAgent string for Firefox 1.0 on Windows (taken from http://www.useragentstring.com/pages/firefox/)

Code: Select all

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; WinNT4.0; en-US; rv:1.7.5) Gecko/20041107 Firefox/1.0

states that it uses Gecko rv:1.7.5 and my current version of IceWeasel on Lenny

Code: Select all

Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8.1.6) Gecko/20070723 Iceweasel/2.0.0.6 (Debian-2.0.0.6-0etch1+lenny1)

uses Gecko rv:1.8.1.6

What's my point? The Scalix browser sniffer that checks for the word Firefox, is flawed. It needs to be fixed.

To insist that we all use the same brand of the open source tool is like insisting that the Debian packages will only work on Debian.

I'm not asking Scalix to support Iceweasel, I'm asking you to support the Gecko engine; since it has proven itself, and user-base is pretty large.

And on a final note, the Debian project changed the name to Iceweasel for a couple of reasons that make sense to me (at least).

Mozilla said they couldn't use the name Firefox without using the logos (which are trademarked). The rules were changed for Ubuntu though.

Then they said, all patches have to get approval from Mozilla before they could be included in Debian. On the surface it seems fair, but you must understand that Debian cannot depend on Mozilla for security or compatibility patches.

Additionally, in Debian sometimes, security patches are backported from newer versions to the versions in "stable". This is because, the "stable" distribution generally doesn't get new packages (i.e. new versions. Just the ones that were there when it became stable).

I hope this helps clear this issue up.[/list]

[florian]

I have to disagree here, both from a Scalix product point of view as well as philosophically.

debian have - in the scope of the Iceweazel project - modified the Gecko engine with their patches; for this reason, it is not safe to assume that this Gecko engine will behave exactly the same as in Firefox, therefore we don't want to and cannot take support for it. We specifically do not support the Gecko engine, but the exact browser versions we have tested, and for good reason. We have seen so many very subtle AJAX issues, even in dot releases of Mozilla Firefox browsers that we need to be very specific.

Having said that - in most cases this is known to work and can be tweaked around by modifying the UserAgent string.

I might be convinced that it could be a valid enhancement request to introduce an option that would 'relax' browser checks and possibly, in the Mozilla case, go back to the Gecko engine check.

On the general Iceweazel statement.... and the following is strictly personal opinion - I disagree as well. I don't think Mozilla Corp and the foundation is all goodness, but I appreciate what they've done for the 'net in general and the balance they bring in. They are the ones that have made sure that "we" (in the sense of non-Windows users, me personally working on a Mac most of the time) are able to see almost all of the content the Web has to offer by creating a browser platform that is seen so relevant in terms of market share that basically noone dares to ignore it.

That hadn't been the case with any other browser before FF came along. They've done a tremendously important job here and I appreciate that very much.

So why not let others take this further and use it for their own purposes? It's Open Source, after all, with many contributors.

Correct - and that's why the Gecko engine and the source code for Firefox are free and I presume always will be.

However, if everybody was allowed to recompile FF without rebranding, there would suddenly be tens, if not hundreds of different FF versions floating around. Some might just be recompiles, some might have patches selected by someone, some might (and actually would be, I'm sure) malware.

For the purpose of consumer users (and FF has a broad market share amongst those as well), this may not happen. Definitely not. And the only way to protect this from happening is to preserve the integrity of official builds. And not allowing anyone else to use logo and name, IMHO, is, at least for a consumer target audience, the most effective way of doing that. Which, again, ensures a high level of integrity for the official versions, no cloning, no bad things, and a good market share and a stronghold against a pretty boring IE-only world.

I personally would probably even go a couple steps further and even introduce proper code signing into the game, so that the product checks itself and makes sure it's not only a paper limitation.

So as friendly and nice the idea of backporting patches, stable releases, etc., is, at least for a consumer/desktop oriented packaging, the debian people should not do what they do - they should just ship the browser in binary form consisting of the original Mozilla Corp packages, so that everyone can use it; my understanding is that this is what Ubuntu is doing. They can certainly maintain their own copy of it with their own patches, but it should not be the mainstream. If debian in itself wants to become viable for consumer end users and company desktops, they will need to define a more flexible policy (similar to Ubuntu's Universe policy) for some bundled apps....... and that's part of it.



I know I might have started a flame ware here, but I believe I have expressed this opinion before in the Iceweazel debate. For me, as it stands, as long as Iceweazel doesn't gain browser share in it's own right and it makes sense to start testing it, it is unsupported with Scalix and whoever wants to use it will have to tweak it to make that clear....

Florian.

[marcdm]

I don't know of the Gecko engine being modified for Iceweasel. Matter of fact, this is the first time I'm hearing that. Take a look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iceweasel#Features and http://www.gnu.org/software/gnuzilla/ to get an idea of what's really changed between Firefox and Iceweasel.

No Gecko changes listed.

Florian said :

We have seen so many very subtle AJAX issues, even in dot releases of Mozilla Firefox browsers that we need to be very specific.

I'm not buying this. Scalix says it supports Firefox 1.0 or higher. Unless this is not really true. If it's not really true, and only said for simplicity purposes, then it shouldn't be a stretch to just support Gecko for simplicity purposes or to properly specify/support the versions that are known to work.

If Iceweasel was less capable than Firefox 1.0 then the developers would be just plain dumb. Gecko works, that's why they use it.

...if everybody was allowed to recompile FF without rebranding, there would suddenly be tens, if not hundreds of different FF versions floating around. Some might just be recompiles, some might have patches selected by someone, some might (and actually would be, I'm sure) malware...

I totally agree. And this is why I think changing the name was the right thing to do.

As for the relaxing of the browser checks, especially in the case of Mozilla, I think this is needed. Firefox, Flock, SeaMonkey, Netscape, Galeon, Epiphany, Swiftfox, AOL (Mac) all use the Gecko engine.

If we can't detect for Gecko instead of Firefox though, I think it would be nice to have a "continue" link on the BrowserRejection page. This would allow me to continue to login if my browser is unsupported but I want to risk it.

know I might have started a flame ware here

I've got an extinguisher handy, peace on Earth (and in Scalix)

[florian]

I don't know of the Gecko engine being modified for Iceweasel. Matter of fact, this is the first time I'm hearing that. Take a look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iceweasel#Features and http://www.gnu.org/software/gnuzilla/ to get an idea of what's really changed between Firefox and Iceweasel.
No Gecko changes listed.

I think.... http://packages.debian.org/changelogs/pool/main/i/iceweasel/iceweasel_2.0.0.6-0etch1/changelog is probably the better reference. Note that what the debian people are doing is again different from the GNU folks.

Florian.