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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.
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. 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.
My work here is dung.
Just use IE for Linux like anybody else, ok? You bloody geeks..
It doesn't work with the PlayStation 3's (non-Linux OS mode) browser either.
Not only does this wreak of desperation on the part of Microsoft, but I have to wonder how in the world they thought this wasn't going to come out? Or they just didn't care?
"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.
Nemilar http://www.techthrob.com - Visit Me!
...Another article by another clueless user. He could have just used Internet Explorer for Linux.
Sheesh.
Shades of Dos ain't done till Lotus won't run.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
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.
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?
Proudly supporting the Libertarian Party.
This sounds very much like the Opera issue on msn.com a few years ago. Opera suddenly couldn't render the site correctly, so the programmers investigated, spoofed the user agent from "Opera" to the nonexistent browser "Oprah", and suddenly the page rendered perfectly well.
I just tried it using FF 2.0.0.11 on Ubuntu and it works great with the AJAX interface. Faster than gmail even. If there weren't so much spam I'd be tempted to switch back. I never got the warning he describes.
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.
It can be go tiem now plees?
Who uses hotmail anyway?
Now that there is real competition in the browser arena, Microsoft goes from lazy to foul again. The fines must go up dramatically or Microsoft must be broken up. It seems nothing else can teach them to behave.
last time i checked XP doesn't install from disk if there is a previous linux install - at least without a manual partition adjustment.
GMail's interface update a month or so back randomly crashes Firefox 2.0 on Windows whenever you click one of the left-hand links or "Send." The 3.0 beta doesn't have this problem, and you can specify "ui=1" in the URL to use the old interface, but it's worth mentioning.
Your brain is not a computer.
Yes, the MS employee responding sounded clueless - almost as if he's some cheap as shit outsourced grunt reeling stock answers from a knowledge base.
You, however, sound like a mildly retarded cunt. Seriously, you sound like an absolute cunt.
In the story about Linux having .08% on the desktop I commented that there is no way to determine Linux (or any other OSS software) useage since its license says it can be freely distributed, that my one download of Mandriva is now installed on half dozen friends' computers as well as my own.
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 was answered with "if you spoof you're part of the problem".
Ha! Take that!
Now, lets take this to its logical conclusion (and I apologise if you're a programmer for Microsoft but you should get a job with a better company if you value your reputation). IE hires web site coders who code stupid web sites stupidly - in this case, Hotmail. It is simplly moronic to exclude ANY potential customers. It isn't a leap of the imagination to say that if their site coders are fucktarded morons, their OS and app programmers probably are as well.
Again, that's not the coders' fault, it's HR's fault. It may be that the coders are competent intelligent people but the PHBs and their moronic policies require stupid code. The end result is that same; bad web sites, bad OSes and bad apps.
I dislike Microsoft becaue I'm forced to use their products at work. I'm using Yahoo mail, where does that leave me if Microsoft is sucessful in buying them out?
-mcgrew
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
This exact disaster is exactly why Microsoft cannot be allowed to extend its monopoly to absorb Yahoo. When Yahoo fails the way Hotmail now has with Firefox, the way Hotmail did when MS tried to cut it over to Windows servers, the Internet will take a major hit. Even if it drives consumers to GMail, that just reinforces Google's dominance, without credible competition.
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.
--
make install -not war
the solution is to not use Hotmail. How's them apples?
BC
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.
Sounds vaguely familiar, but I can't quite place it.
I use OWA all the time Firefox and Opera and it renders fine.
I don't honestly know why you people feel the need to lie about this stuff. Microsoft does plenty of stupid shit without you inventing it.
"It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him." - Tolkien
Sounds like something else that could do with being pointed out to the EU. Using their web presence to artificially tie people to their desktop monopoly. Yes, we all expect this from Microsoft, but it really shouldn't be allowed.
My fiancée uses Hotmail and has never complained while checking her account on my Ubuntu 64-bit machine. It even worked with the new design (windows live hotmail). I was always amazed when she did so because I figured my computer would burst into flames if it ever went to a Microsoft site. Did this just happen? Like this week?
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
I know that it sounds like MS is being pointedly stupid, but if you think about it, what circumstances would be necessary for this to make sense?
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 on the Internet. The basic idea is to try to make sure that you do not use OSS because the spyware only runs on windows.
The NSA has already tried to get permission to use such spyware. Having failed to get permission, the next best thing is to get the OS/Browser manufacturer to put it in for you.
Do I really believe that MS is complicit in such activities? Well, I have no reason to not believe they are, and that is the big rub.
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
That's what I thought. I call BS!
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
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...
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
There is absolutely no web control or feature (other than ActiveX controls) that will work on IE but not on FF. They can not possibly be doing something so advanced that it requires a special javascript call that is only possible in IE.
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 the only reasonable policy to implement.
Since a policy like this is much easier to implement that making it work on all browsers before beta testing... it's now either maliciousness or complete disregard both of which obviously make them look like @sshats...
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
"DOS ain't done till Lotus won't run . . ."
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
Strage seeing this. I had checked my hotmail not 5 minutes ago, using Centos and
Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686 (x86_64); en-US; rv:1.8.1.4) Gecko/20070515 Firefox/2.0.0.4
I did switch to the classic hotmail style a few weeks ago as I just didn't like the navigation of their fancier version, I kept back-arrowing thinking it'd take me back to the message list but it dumped me back out of the entire email script and I had to go back in. I don't like the fancy interface, and maybe that's the one that's broke, but the classic style one doesn't seem to have any problems this morning...
I honestly think that so-called "web developers" should be banned from ever looking at the user-agent string. Example: My bank's website works on every browser I've tried it with, except Firefox on OpenBSD. (Yes, it works on Firefox on Linux.) This is kind of ridiculous, so I sent in an email about it. I got some ignorant tech support email back clearly not understanding the problem.
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.
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.
Makes you wonder what will happen if Microsoft acquires Yahoo.
Hotmail renders badly with Firefox for me. The font is too big the first time I log in. Refreshing the page fixes this but it's quite annoying. It only happens on the Linux build too.
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.
Summation 2
"FROM:hotmail.com DISCARD" in your sendmail access file.
Do you really want to associate with "those" kind of people?
NB It seems to block a bit of spam also.
There should be a legal mandate for email address portability. This is mandated for mobile phone and landline numbers (incoming calls are checked against a db then forwarded to the new operator), why not for email addresses ? Price of implementation in IT is orders of magnitude lower than prices in telco world.
The saddest part is that some friends reported problems with Hotmail before and resolved them by switching from IE to FireFox. (closed-down school environment, but not so closed as to break Firefox Portable )
"I was in love with a beautiful blonde once, dear. She drove me to drink. It's the one thing I am indebted to her for."
You can get it here: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/59. Under Tools->User Agent Switcher you can choose between several user agents that you want FF to report. Very handy for sites like these.
Obligatory blog plug: http://www.caseybanner.ca/
Besides, a MS product not working on Linux? What else is news?
Seven Days with Ubuntu Unity
Microsoft has not worked well with anyone. Even though they are a company based in the United States and Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer are U.S. citizens, they have a philosophy and mantra that goes against the principles of democracy, against the very foundations of their country that establish freedom and opportunities for ALL people. They simply want to take advantage of numbers, not grow a society in the freedoms many forefathers have fought for, but one that would continue to give them lots and lots of money. They are selfish, greedy, and self-serving. All they care about is getting people to use their software, so they continue their money stream. They don't care who they exclude, they don't have to care about the quality of their services, because they have a monopoly bought from the US-government through the avenues that allow special interests to take power away from the people and give it to the people who have a lot of money, no matter if that money was earned honestly, or not.
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.)
When looking through the Firehose to select articles, Please, check the source. If something bashes Microsoft or the RIAA or MPAA don't simply mod up. Read the article and verify it. I know this kind of stuff happens occasionally, (I'm not that new here) but this is the second time this week an article has been almost completely wrong. I understand if there are minor inaccuracies, but this is ridiculous.
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
Open Source promotes Competition.
Closed Source promotes Collusion.
Hotmail doesn't work on firefox 2.0 on linux, so what? Who's loss is that? Isn't that worse for hotmail, less site visitors etc? Does it mean more gmail?
Analytic & algebraic topology of locally Euclidean meterization of infinitely differentiable Riemmanian manifold
I was disgusted to find out that to "keep" your alumni email account, you have to sign up for a new account that is through hotmail. This was after about a decade of allowing the alumni to freely use (no alumni fee) their old email addresses (as long as they kept the account tidy). I can understand them wanting to get away from too much freebie stuff, but going to hotmail (and charging for it) was just... terrible. As a result, I'm not going to be using that service at all. I had converted to gmail a short time prior to that anyway... so now let's just see when gmail decides to start charging. =[
Use the "classic" version of Hotmail -- worked fine with Firefox 2.0.0.11 about 2 minutes ago. How useful are these "enhancements" anyway?
That's why the Firefox tag line is, "Reclaim the web, again". Imagine what would happen when Microsoft will make full functional use of its XAML.
one man's constant is another man's variable.
I've sent 20+ Gmail invites to Hotmail-using friends of mine complaining about endless spam, the slowness of it and the sudden removal of POP3 support. Not one of them since has ever sent me an email from a "hotmail.com" email address.
So start using up those 99 Gmail invites you can send out to "the great unwashed" - once they see Gmail, they won't go back and then Hotmail not working with Firefox won't be a problem any more because Hotmail will be dead.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
What kind of self-respecting Linux user would be using Hotmail anyways? Serves the person right for not having an easy to maintain Postfix+Fetchmail+Cyrus+Courier+SpamAssassin setup!
As a large multinational, one doesn't wreak of desperation, one wreaks havok, though perhaps that does reek of desperation.
And either way, that's somewhat of a dumb mistake to make on an enterprise website. Even smaller companies I've worked for have testing plans to ensure functionality on all major browsers.
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 unreasonable to believe that a sudden "incompatibility" with competing products might be deliberate... it's been a pretty standard practice even from the early DOS/win3.1 days.
Finally seems appropriate:
andnothingofvaluewaslost
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
I do not knwo which one is to blaim in this quoting of emails. The complete clueless support, whcih claims to have looked at it, but is not even pointing in the right direction, or the leet linux L0v3r, who calls al MS software bugridden virus attractors.
Support is very poor here. This kind of support is helping nobody. not the beginner user, not the leet linux user. If all hotmaillive support is like this, they better drop it and replace it by a chatbot.
The fact if that guy pays makes no difference. If he paid he can be answered quicker, but it is not a good reason to answer better or more polite. If he did not paysupport he might be a future paying customer, or might be one.
Big applications used by lots of users fail sometime. They could either make a note of the issue, or point him away to some reporting tool.
The "make a rain dance and enter the secret reoslution code" is not a good anwer.
... if you can't view their product using a competitors O/S and someone else's browser? And since you seemed to have found a work around, what exactly is the problem?
Is there anyone on the planet who uses both linux AND hotmail?
Technoli
My first reaction was "then don't use Hotmail". But actually while I abhor MS and use Gmail, I'd prefer MS fixes their service to work with Firefox.
I find Gmail to be sub-par considering that it is generates income via ads.
In particular:
no folders
no way to color items to come back to them (other than set to unread status, or starring them - heck Macs have had color labels since forever)
inability to search on partial names (of email addresses; I have a client named r.ueda@xxxxx and cannot search for "ueda" only "r.ueda".)
and search system in general sucks considering how many search experts they have on board. they could do a heck of a lot more.
inability to email phones of the largest Japanese phone company (have had people tell me Japanese is corrupted when emailed from them, but corporate email works fine - they probably just need to encode correctly and assume phones don't do UTF8 I expect)
spam system needs work (better at least than what yahoo used to have. but if 10,000 people get the same spam they should call it black spam, while if their filter picks up a client of mine and says probably spam they should mark it light-grey or green spam. Then let me filter/search with a color wheel).
limited visualization
limited user initiated spam filtering
no way to indicate important clients (who should show up at top in red I think)
very confusing how to find where to submit reports
other things..
I have contacted google about a couple issues, such as the phone issue which was NOT resolved. In general I find they are incapable of actually conducting a discussion with a user or saying they are not perfect. And I hate to say this since I like Google.
Anyway I would like to see Google have real competition so they are forced to maintain and improve their own service, rather than only get the benefit of MS' stupid lock-in strategies and not real competition. Maybe MS buying Yahoo will keep google on their toes?
Works for me. Disclaimer: I'm running SUSE in a VMWare VISTA hosted VM, but I doubt that matters.
/LabMonkey09
Why use a webmail interface at all? I never understood the obsession with GMail's interface or any browser-based interface for that matter. There are dedicated email-reading applications that do a much better job than a browser ever can, and with Blue HttpMail you can use your Hotmail account as if it were IMAP. That way, you are not at the mercy of whims of a webmail administration crew, who can decide to change the interface or requirements or ads whenever they feel like it.
If it weren't for my stupidity, I'd be some kind of genius.
Your Wal-Mart buyer will go to some PC repair shop and say, Customer "here, make it work" Shop "you need windows" Customer "do it" Shop: $200 please Customer "crap, guess I am out $200"
What self-respecting Linux nerd uses Hotmail?
The solution is simple enough — don't use Hotmail.
Fixed.
All you Gmail touters... To date I have not signed up for a google account due to privacy concerns. I'm just surprised at how many people think storing their info on Gmail is a good idea and have no concerns about it.
I guess that is why I dont get the concept and concerned that the current facebook/myspace generation and their ignorance/lack of caring about privacy will enable further erosion from the government without resistance.
VERY misleading! Hotmail works for me too! And I'm running IE, Windows Xp Pro and......oh wait. Sorry. Nevermind.
I gave up religion for Lent.
Opera is free since more than two years !
Time to wake up...
If this is true, for a convicted monopolist to specifically disable compatibility with a competitor, when it would otherwise work (without the competitor check) is that not an actionable item by the FTC et al?
:)
(I almost feel stupid asking; Microsoft seems to do things that should bring regulatory action on a weekly basis. But they seem to be so tight with the gov't that no action will ever occur, other than the slaps on the wrist. I'm ready to go live in a E.U. country
Love many, trust a few, do harm to none.
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.
Simply don't use Hotmail. Take your traffic to services that don't play such stupid tricks.
Anybody else having problems with IE 7 and hotmail. for me it takes about 3 minutes to load a email. FF takes 2-3 seconds.
If so, you can configure gmail to pull mail from your hotmail account.
Oh, wait. MSFT shares have essentially been flat for years. I guess I have my answer. Please mod this post redundant.
Have gnu, will travel.
#Posting anon because either 1) I'll be modded troll, which I don't deserve, or 2) I'll be modded insightful, which may technically be true, but it's about as insightful as asking "doesn't everyone know the sky is blue by now?"
Who the fuck uses Hotmail anymore?
Do you evidence about gmail not being secure? Your post seems like an unsupported assertion.
...promised better interoperatibility to the EU...
However we all do understand that providing interoperatibility between such broken product as IE and W3C compliant browsers must be very hard for the biggest software company in the world.
Uhm, anyone used Gmail in the last 6 months with Firefox in Debian?
That only works in HTML form sometimes. Mozilla and Debian do not get along.
Don't Crease the Weasel!
I'd like to believe that the "Opera is not free" remark was supposed to mean "Opera is not Free (as in speech) Software."
But then there are so many people out there still living in 2005 who don't know that Opera has been free (as in beer) since then.
Personally, I blame the decision to use the term "free software" even though the word "free" has two entirely different meanings that could apply in this context. So much for avoiding words that could cause confusion. (It's so much easier in other languages, like, say, Spanish, where libre and gratis are impossible to mix up.)
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...
The MAFIAA is a bunch of mindless jerks who will be the first up against the wall when the revolution comes
GMail has been free to sign up for for ages. You don't need an invitation to http://mail.google.com/mail/signupsign up anymore.
MMO Vampire Role Playing
I am surprised that anyone noticed.
Dear Fuckers,
What are you supposed to do on a PPC Macintosh?
Use Safari? You have to delete the cookie that it sends (and you must accept) or it will send you into a page referring loop.
Use IE5.2 for Mac? It doesn't work. You can't navigate through anything.
Use MS Virtual PC for Mac? It's not sold or supported anymore.
I've had a hotmail.com email address for over a decade before you bastards at MS bought them out and fucked it up. My only options are to buy a Windows system or stop using hotmail. Guess which one I won't be doing.
Safari (3.x, Mac) also does not work. The Windows Live login screen redirects in a loop.
The workaround is to click on the link to sign-up for Hotmail. Clicking on the first option (register for free Hotmail) takes you to your mailbox.
I haven't attempted this on Firefox for Linux, or anything else... if the issue sounds the same, the workaround may work for other browsers.
All my liberal friends think I'm a conservative, all my conservative friends think I'm a liberal.
The emails using gmail, hotmail or yahoomail can all be easily authenticated if sent using the web interface or an smtp server which requires authentication. The same goes for the gmail invites mail.
However in this case, I believe that they're blocked due to the filter heuristics that target the form of the message rather than gmail addresses specifically.
You're right. Microsoft is well known as a small software company with a limited budget. I doubt that they could stretch it to pay to download Firefox for testing.
MicroWHO?
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
Then I look forward to seeing mshaft and their "hot mail" "bend over"... and SQUEAL when I bust out my-ess-cue-ell...
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
> There are alternatives to Hotmail. There are
> none to the iPhone (so far).
Yes there is. Simply don't use the iPhone. That is an alternative.
What self-respecting Linux user would use Hotmail in the first place?
Look guys,
Yahoo did this briefly for a short time. With their classic mail interface, back in 2006, they were upgrading their message input box. When you viewed it with IE, you get the rich-text option with the ability to bold, italicise and change the color of the font.
When you viewed it with IE, you didn't get any of those things. You just got a plain box. But after a while, a few months or so, the same thing appeared on firefox.
It could just be that Microsoft is testing. I don't know, this just feels like a non-story in some ways for me. I don't think Microsoft is being deliberately evil here.
It might be just me, but whenever I open the top page an ad at the top right corner covers half of the latest post.
I'm sure noone else cares, and I'm too late to get modded up, but the new hotmail interface won't load with Seamonkey either - on any OS. Spoof the User Agent to Firefox on WinXP and it works fine. I've contacted both the hotmail support team, and the Seamonkey devs, to no avail. Oh, and for those who are saying they don't care, it's just bells and whistles etc - the new interface is much much better than the old one, it's not just about eye-candy, it really increases productivity and usability by looking and feeling more like a standalone email client.
The solution is simple enough -- spoofing the User Agent that Firefox reports.
There's even a simpler solution - get rid of Hotmail. Now.
Is that news or not?
I posit it is.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
I ran into this problem a month or more ago, and figured it out. On Ubuntu, my issue was not the Firefox/Linux user agent, but rather the Vendor string that Ubuntu adds. I changed the following three Firefox config options to "" and the Windows Live Hotmail interface loads fine.
general.useragent.vendor (was "Ubuntu")
general.useragent.vendorComment (was "Gutsy")
general.useragent.vendorSub (was "7.10")
The resulting user agent that WORKS with Hotmail is:
"Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-GB; rv:1.8.1.12) Gecko/20080207 Firefox/2.0.0.12"
So it appears that Microsoft is not trying to exclude other browsers, but rather other OPERATING SYSTEMS. This, I believe, is even worse, and much more nefarious. If it is intentional, I think a fair case can be made that this is an illegal, monopolistic, anti-competitive practice. It's possible, however, that their user-agent detection simply cannot handle the vendor strings.
The portal solution from Microsoft, know as Sharepoint does have rendering bugs in the latest build of Firefox (under Windows XP), it's really a shame since many people have to use it, it's not like a writing application like Word for which you can find free equivalents, it's a business portal and you have to retrieve informations on it!