I use Opera for a browser. I tried to access an article on the Jerusalem Post website, and a message popped up that the browser isn’t compatible:
“You have reached this page because the web browser you are using is not currently supported by our site.”
What’s the difference what browser I use to access the site? What do they care? I’ve never had this problem with any other website when using Opera.
You can set Opera to identify itself as a different browser type using the Preferences menu (can’t remember which specific option as I’m at work and using IE).
Web designers often care because different browsers display things differently. Instead of designing things to degrade gracefully across all browsers – which is mostly the right way to go, but sometimes not, depending on your target audience – the designer creates different versions of the website to achieve the same effect in different browsers.
A lot of websites have conditional code on the pages based on what browser you are running. There are minor differences between (for example) Internet Explorer and Mozilla, and your browser sends an ID string along with the request for the page.
So the website probably has a case statement of some kind; it doesn’t have a case for browser=Opera so takes you off into a generic error page.
Workaround: Hit F12 (or File:Quick Preferences.
Down at the bottom, there’s a set of options:
Identify as Opera
Identify as Mozilla 5.0
Identify as Mozilla 4.78
Identify as MSIE 5.0
or something like that.
Select “Identify as MSIE 5.0” and your target website will think you;re running Internet Explorer.
I get this occasionally; most recently at a page on Honda’s site for media release images.
I suspect the reason for the message is twofold: first, they’re probabaly using some authoring features on their site that are proprietary to MicroSoft, and only work with IE, and wouldn’t display right or at all in Opera. Second, they may be (irrationally) afraid that allowing an unusual browser on thier site might compromise security.
If you’re using the free version of Opera (as I do) you might have seen a banner campaign recently by Opera to lobby web site designers to use open design practices in creating websites, and to eschew MS-only bells & whistes.
There is a Pit thread or two in here, believe me.
http://www.anybrowser.org/campaign/ – The Viewable with Any Browser Campaign offers some ideas for emailing the webmaster with your grievances.
I have Identify as MSIE 5.0 checked already, so something is obviously not working!
I have that problem sometimes, and some just don’t display properly. I copy and paste the URL into IE in those cases.
There are ways to tell what browser you’re running, to a limited degree of success, without using the ID. I have a notice to upgrade on my web page that won’t be displayed on any browser that’s CSS2-compliant, for instance, and has nothing to do with a browser’s ID, only its capabilities. I don’t think you’re going to find a way around this.
(Oh, by the way, as much as I don’t like tricks like this, I’m using this trick for good, and the Jerusalem Post website is using it for evil.)
I don’t think Opera can be set to completely disguise its identity. Even in the “Identify as MSIE 5.0” setting it sends my user-agent string as “Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.0; Windows 98) Opera 6.04 [en]”.
Say what?
I’m referring to the same thing that Derleth is, that pages should be viewable with any browser. Determining what browser someone is using with the intention of hiding content from them is not very nice. Also, though I really don’t know, I suspsect that MSIE does not have an audio or even a text-only version*. If this is the case, restricting viewing effectively hinders certain handicapped people, which, IMHO, is discriminatory. Evil is a bit strong, though, since everybody does it.