And this is We have detected that you are running a browser not supported by this website, written Nov 05, 2004, and concerning Uncategorized

From Powergen, via Bill:

We currently support Microsoft Internet Explorer (Version 5.0 or above) and Netscape Navigator (Version 7.02 or above).
Whilst not officially supported the site can also be used with Opera (Version 7.20 or above) and Konqueror (Version 3.1.1 or above).
Your Current Browser: Netscape
Your Current Version: 0.10.1 (Debian package 0.10.1+1.0PR-4)
It is recommended that you upgrade your browser to one of the below.

I would have thought that they were clueful people (we support Konqueror! look!), except that they clearly all still use Internet Explorer at work (or one of them would have noticed this).
Alternatively, is the Debian version number wrong?
Nonetheless, regardless of which it is, this shows, very very clearly, the flaws of browser sniffing from the user agent string. Don’t do it, kids!

Comments

David

Same sort of deal with tesco.com: use Opera (identifying itself as Opera) and you get redirected to Tesco Access, the low-res version of the site. Set Opera to identify itself as IE 6, and you can use the main site with no problems. Just plain shoddy browser sniffing.

Matt

I’ve pointed this out to Powergen a couple of times and I got one response which was half clueful, in which the guy apologised and suggested I use Konqueror.

It’s ridiculous that a major utility provider should be so inept in its understanding of the web, particularly when it encourages its customers to do as much as possible online.

Senji

Unsurprisingly it does the same thing to my “Firearachnid” (Firefox PR with Firesomething extension).

dusoft

BTW: Have you ever noticed the strange versioning of Mozilla Firefox – we did have 0.9 and now we have 0.10 ? But of course it totally wrong: 0.9>0.10 (0.90>0.10)

This is only internal versioning and that’s related to the verion number you see at the screenshot.

Also – use extension to change browser indetification to custom (e.g. My custom Netscape v100.50) so the site works ;-)

Ade

Yup, I noticed this too. I use the user-agent extension switcher by Chris Pederick, which you can either configure to say you are using Netscape 7.x (little bit of config needed) or use it to say you are running Opera (requires no extra config).

However I fully agree – why should we have to? I was amazed to see Konqueror but not firefox – go figure!