Bug#484121: tasksel: let's sync on the GNOME task

[Mike Hommey]

On Tue, Jun 24, 2008 at 03:25:08AM -0400, Eric Dorland wrote:
> * Joey Hess (joeyh at debian.org) wrote:
> > Eric Dorland wrote:
> > > Well I think Google generally does treat the Iceweasel user agent
> > > properly.
> > 
> > Not in the case of maps.google.com, where the sidebar cannot be hidden
> > in iceweasel, can in firefox.
> > 
> > > > I'm afraid that documenting it in README.Debian won't help desktop users
> > > > who just find that this strange "iceweasel" browser we install by
> > > > default doesn't work on sites that firefox works on.
> > > 
> > > Could we do it in a more prominent perhaps?  
> > 
> > FWIW, I got from the README.Debian to #354622, but I was unable to from
> > there figure out how to quickly and easily change the user agent.
> > 
> > A more prominent thing might be a hyperlink directly to the relevant
> > about:config setting from the default start page .. or a pre-installed
> > user agent switcher that has firefox in it as an option. I think that
> > something like that would go a certian distance to making it accessible
> > to users, though it would still be a bother.
> 
> I thought about this this week and I've come to agree with Joey's
> position.
> 
> We could document exactly how to change the useragent for the user,
> but why wouldn't they do this? From there perspective there are all
> upsides and no downsides to making the useragent be Firefox, And if
> everyone is going to mechanically change it (or want to change it),
> then it's not really a good default.
> 
> While I agree that websites shouldn't be abusing useragent strings the
> way they do, we can't win this fight on our own and in the mean time
> our users are getting broken results that are in our power to fix.
> 
> Thoughts?

We have plenty other browsers that are not Firefox and don't try to
claim to be Firefox...

Mike