MSN advertising page thinks Firefox is an old browser?

i'm using Firefox 1.0 - anyone else seeing the same?

[kpaul]

da url:

[advertising.msn.com...]

the message:

Please Upgrade Your Browser
You are using: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Win98; en-US; rv:1.7.5) Gecko/20041107 Firefox/1.0
To view this site you must use:
Microsoft® Internet Explorer or Netscape® Navigator 4.0 or higher

Click here to find the latest free browser from Microsoft

-----

heh. the 'click here' is a link with blue text, which you can't see.

i'm thinking this must be a browser sniffer gone wrong page?

;)

-kpaul

[TheDoctor]

The really amusing part is where it says that NN4 isn't an old browser.

So now we know: there are NN4 fans in Microsoft. What next? The CEO of General Motors riding around in a Model T?

[monkeythumpa]

I will contend that Model Ts were made better than today's GM cars.

[rocknbil]

I think this is perfectly indicative of why you should NOT use a browser identification system to do whatever it is you need to do.

How, you might ask, when browsers all react differently? This is an idea I picked up from Devedge a long time ago - instead of a long convoluted script that is going to require updating ad infinitum with every browser release, base your task on the actual existence of the objects - for example, if you want to hide/show a layer, test for getElementByID, etc.

Almost anything you'd want to do you can test for the object rather than determining browser and version. Worked out so far, anyway. :-)

[Robino]

That is hilarious!

"Upgrade" to IE? <--- that takes the cake!

[BlobFisk]

Gmails lack of support for Opera always annoys me.... But they are using a lot of JavaScript, including the extremely powerful xmlHTTPrequest method.... But you think that an organisation that techie would support all browsers...