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Hotmail Full Version Incompatible With Firefox 3
An anonymous reader notes that Hotmail's full version doesn't work with Firefox 3. Users get the following message when they try to log in: You are temporarily on the classic version of Windows Live Hotmail due to an error encountered during login. Before trying again, please clear your cache and cookies. (Clearing cache and cookies doesn't fix it.) At least 8 other bug reports have been duped to this one. The fault apparently lies with the Hotmail site, not Mozilla — maintainer Dave Garrett assigned the bug to Tech Evangelism, explaining: "I'll... move this over to TE, as my guess is this [is] the site's fault (just bad user agent sniffing?)."
FP.
Does using to add-on to look like IE change anything? That would be pretty revealing.
IE comes with MSN as the default page and has links to tons of Microsoft products and services whereas Firefox leans away from most Microsoft-based sites. I'm sure these bugs will be fixed eventually... but I'm also pretty sure Microsoft wasn't too worried about launching Hotmail without Firefox support.
Well, back to rejecting software patent applications.
If you use Safari, eventually the site saves your info to the cache - even if you ask for it not to save your username or password. Once your info is in Safari's cache, loading hotmail.com to try to log in gets you into an infinite loop bouncing between a couple of addresses. You have to stop the loading, go empty the cache of everything from live.com, and reload hotmail.com. Perhaps some of the fault is Apple's, but I've never had that problem with any other website while using Safari.
It's probably just Microsoft being Microsoft.
Even the free version wont work in konqueror ( or at least hasn't for me for some time now )
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I mean setting user agent to IE/windows helped.. However later they added some extra code, and even blocked that. The only way I could bank then, was by downloading the login page and editing it to remove the IE/Windows detection bit.. And guess what ? I could enter and use the rest of the site no problems whatsoever..
Under Tools -> IE Tab Options, Sites Filter tab - add the site, wildcarded as needed, for instance like http://foo.com/*
With a large dev team, lots of server admins, lots of marketing and a massive user base - you mean they don't test at all with other browsers while their in beta?
The only way I could see this happening is if theres an internal policy to use _only_ IE for browsing (unlikely), or if developers were not allowed to.
Same behavior in Konqueror(3.5.9). Well, actually, the default Konqueror UA isn't recognized as compatible with the full version interface; but spoofing either an IE or an FF UA changes that. With the spoof in place, the page exhibits the same behavior as described with FF3
So, this problem isn't caused by straight discrimination based on UA string, since spoofing IE had no effect. Something about the website is clearly wonky, though I can't say whether or not KHTML is to blame.
- http://*.hotmail.com/*
- http://*.live.com/*
- https://*.live.com/*
Sucks, I know, but I'd rather do this than wait for Microsoft to fix their websites to work with FF.Why waste time learning, when ignorance is instantaneous? - Calvin
The full version works fine in Opera 9.5...now who says Opera's not a compatible enough browser? ;-)
Karma: Excellent (fuck, even in the future moderation doesn't work!)
From my experience, The new hotmail has compatability issues with IE7!! LOL
As much as I hate anecdotal "evidence" for things, I can say that I just cleared my junk mail from a full Windows Live mail account (it was Hotmail until they forced me to move it over) just before I came to slashdot. In Firefox 3. No problems. I've never seen that message.
That being said, I also have SUSE, and it occurred to me perhaps there is some special deal going on there to allow it to work fine. But if not, I can't see any good reason to blame Mozilla or Microsoft; the bug was filed with Firefox 3 still in beta, perhaps it was an un-updated extension or the like interfering?
Um, I think M$ does this to force people to use IE to check their hotmail. Not like that doesn't fit their MO
While I don't use Hotmail as my main account (haven't for quite a while), I still use it. And Firefox. No, nobody installed it for me. I am the go-to guy for tech and science (etc, etc, etc.) And I don't have any trouble getting into Hotmail (full) at all. :)
I hope this comment is well received... I could have moderated instead!
Persecutors will be violated!
Solution: switch to a decent email service.
Its = possessive. It's = "it is"
Great that you solved it, even so; in a geeky way. However you should have called them and demanded they'd support firefox and linux and yadda yadda or threaten to switch bank. Just as people with hotmail trouble should do this to MSN. In case they don't listen: switch mail provider. Gmail still supports firefox.
I think the bigger question for the film is:
"Why are FireFox users using Hotmail?"
I guess you could be a legacy user from way back when..buuuuuuuut...eventually you have to stop using Geocities.
In 80's and 90's everyone was like "get a compatible" meaning get a PC with DOS or Windows. Now it seems like Microsoft is the incompatible company! Examples: Internet Explorer not standards compliant, Vista not compatible with many business applications that ran well on XP, MS Office not supporting ODF... Does this mean that Microsoft is going down the same path as Commodore and OS/2?
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
This may not exactly be on the topic, but I've noticed every Microsoft run website that I try to access with Firefox gives me trouble, even with previous versions of Firefox.
Its not flamebait.
Support.microsoft.com and office.microsoft.com have quirks with pages loading completely that make it painful enough to use IE instead.
Its not like I have to visit those sites that often though.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
I do for one, I created it when I first got on the net and have never had a problem with it so never needed to change. And since most of my friends use MSN to chat online I need an address for that anyway. I see no conflict of any kind, hotmail works and does its job as do my non-M$ browsers.
The fault apparently lies with the Hotmail site, not Mozilla -- maintainer Dave Garrett assigned the bug to Tech Evangelism, explaining: "I'll... move this over to TE, as my guess is this [is] the site's fault (just bad user agent sniffing?)
1) Changing or spoofing agent string doesn't help. Even pretending to be IE, the .js files associated still fail in FF3 WITH THE SAME ERROR.
2) If you look at the page source you can tell that Hotmail is identifying FireFox properly and loading the corresponding javascript, etc specific to FireFox.
So why is the Firefox team assigning this to 'Agent String' or 'Tech Evangelism' again?
Everyone knows that Al Gore invented the internet. He also has AlGorithm named after him, so he is a programmer too.
You do realise that Outlook Web Access actually does rely on some IE only stuff right? Specifically, it uses a non-standard HTTP verb (SUBSCRIBE), they still haven't moved from using the old XMLHTTP ActiveX control to the new XMLHttpRequest (you can probably forgive them for being slow on the uptake there - they probably can't believe it ever took off - nothing Microsoft invents takes off!), and I imagine some of the Javascript is quite funky too (the "You have new e-mail" popup appears OVER other programs).
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
Why do you care what site it is? The simple fact is that every web browser should work with every web site. Period. Would your opinion be different if this was for Yahoo Mail or Gmail?
Comment of the year
Yahoo lets Safari 3, Opera 9.5, Firefox 2 (3 has documented issue) users to use their (New) Yahoo Mail and (Beta) My Yahoo. They are way complex and beyond anything those MSCE monkeys could code BTW. My Yahoo beta is essentially a full feature RSS reader masked as a webpage.
I don't see any comparison between Yahoo and Hotmail really. It could only serve to get idea about what would happen if MS really acquired Yahoo.
Are you still quoting that distortion of Al's words?
In Soviet Russia, Al Gore quotes YOU!And the Internet invented AL GORE!
And you reply to ME!
And I downmod YOU!
Please stop stalking me, bro.
Some of us signed up with Hotmail before Microsoft acquired it, or haven't felt inconvenienced enough to switch. I only use it for site registrations anyway, I've got my own domain for my 'real' email.
got standards? --- http://www.w3.org/
Been there since 1996. It had everything I loved at the time, it was fast free and BSD. It didn't even attempt to start your chat client when you logged in to check your mail!
It all went downhill after MS bought them. The first thing that happened was they decided to replace the existing and working infrastructure with MS servers running IIS and of course the hardware requirements went up and reliability went down. There are rumors that they haven't been able to fully complete the process to this day and that somewhere at hotmail some BSD machines are still running, but I'm skeptical of that.
And here I sit, like the husband who stays with his unfaithful wife for the kids. Except this is just a mail server rather than a wife and there are no kids involved, so I guess that's not a very good analogy, but God damn it, hotmail will die before I give up that email address.... or they start charging $ for it.
If I ever won enough money to buy the domain, I would start my own mail service and put a graphic on the main page depicting Beastie pitchforking Ballmer with a caption that says "I fear that there are no chairs here, biatch!"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hotmail
Acquired by Microsoft in 1997.
got standards? --- http://www.w3.org/
As a developer I keep a hotmail account around to test that emails from the site go through without triggering their spam filters.
However I don't trust their spam filters to work. I keep flagging EVERY single message from MSN as spam and I still keep getting them.
Not to excuse them for having a crappy site, but do you know for sure that you weren't breaking their terms of service by doing this? With most sites I wouldn't care, but in the case of Internet Banking I might be tempted to just find an alternative bank that did agree to support my browser.
For all you know, the reason they were trying to block Firefox might have been because they knew of a bug that would mis-interpret your banking instructions. (eg. If you told it to pay someone on 6/7/2008, it might be sent by the browser as 7/6/2008.)
If you'd knowingly worked around their efforts to block your browser from using their banking interface, and then they'd lost your money, you might not have much of a legal standing to fall back on.
I got my gmail account by invitation, and I don't believe it ever asked for my phone number. But who knows, it may be different now.
No, you'll be thinking of hotmale.com.
Boy, I wish I'd registered that way back when, to make my megabucks!
Rgds
Damon
http://m.earth.org.uk/
Funny, but true. My wife seems to be unable to log in to Hotmail using IE7, and FF2 & 3 had no problems up until now.