[cosmo-dev] Safari 2

[Matthew Eernisse]

A few approaches:

1. Pre-login-page -- Unsupported browsers would be re-routed to the 
warning page. If they choose to log in, we could set a cookie or use a 
query string param that overrides the redirect, and lets them log in. We 
could include the list of supported browsers inline there.

2. Display a banner over the login page, directly in the page markup 
from the server -- we could include a link to a page that lists our 
supported browsers. We'd have to sniff the client on the server.

3. Interstitial page after logging in -- this would allow them to say 
"don't show me this warning anymore," and we could save it in 
preferences. We could include the list of supported browsers inline.

Number 1 might be the most viable. We really ought to be implementing a 
'gateway' page anyway -- with a JS redirect to the real login, that 
ensures the user has JS enabled, and a noscript element that explains 
what's up if they don't. That page would be a good place to do our 
user-agent detection, display or redirect to the unsupported browser 
warning if necessary, etc.


M.


Bobby Rullo wrote:
> Where/when do you display this message? As an interstitial? As a pop up 
> and fadeaway?
> 
> bobby
> On Nov 15, 2007, at 11:52 AM, Matthew Eernisse wrote:
> 
>> Blacklisting -- i.e., not letting people log in at all -- might be a 
>> bit draconian, given that there may be *degrees* of brokenness even in 
>> a known bad browser. :)
>>
>> An alternative would be to whitelist the supported browsers, and 
>> present the rest with a message of "your browser is unsupported, use 
>> at your own risk. Here are our supported browsers" -- but still allow 
>> people to log in.
>>
>> This makes it clear that things may be broken (whether it's because 
>> the browser is too old, too new, too experimental, or too minor a 
>> player), and puts the onus on the user to decide what to do. We 
>> wouldn't have to maintain a blacklist.
>>
>> This is what we did at my last job (over a period of seven years or so 
>> and many browser upgrades), and it seemed to work reasonably well.
>>
>>
>> Matthew
>>
>> Bobby Rullo wrote:
>>> +1 IFF we have a page for "unsupported browsers" - like "Your browser 
>>> is not supported by Chandler Server. Please use one of the following..."
>>> Most sites accomplish this via a whitelist - only allow known 
>>> supported browsers. I am against that in principle - it basically 
>>> says "only browsers which we know can play along" and it means that 
>>> if some new cool browser/platform is introduced which completely 
>>> supports web-standards we would be blocking them just because we 
>>> didn't know about them.
>>> For this reason I'd rather have a blacklist - block versions web 
>>> browsers of the major families (Firefox, Safari, IE) which are known 
>>> to break.
>>> bobby
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> cosmo-dev mailing list
>> cosmo-dev at lists.osafoundation.org
>> http://lists.osafoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/cosmo-dev
> 
> _______________________________________________
> cosmo-dev mailing list
> cosmo-dev at lists.osafoundation.org
> http://lists.osafoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/cosmo-dev
>