[Novalug] can you make linux work with websites that insist on Windows and IE? if so, how?

[Nino Pereira]

Megan,

thank you for this suggestion. I believe the first
site (https://wawf.eb.mil) now works with Firefox/Iceweasel.

I had to do the following:

Went to the website you indicated (http://prefbar.mozdev.org/),
& found the place that says 'install prefbar'.

The browser told me that I had software install disabled. I didn't
know how to fix this, but a google search had pointers. The secret
is to go in the browser to 'about:config', and
change xpinstall (in my browser the 4-th to last line) from:

xpinstall.enable    default   boolean    false

to

xpinstall.enable    default   boolean     true

by double-clicking on this line.

After this 'prefbar' installed fine.

To make the browser mimics Internet Explorer you have to select
it in the right-most button, called 'UA' (for User Agent).

That does the trick for me, at least so far.

Thank you, list and Megan, for the pointers.

Nino


Megan Larko wrote:
> Nino Pereira wrote:
>> FYI:
>>
>> https://wawf.eb.mil/ (to submit invoices)
>>
>> and www.grants.gov (to submit proposals to DoE: the DOD site
>> works well with linux.
>>
>>
>> How do you 'say it's IE'?
> 
> Well, I actually haven't done it in a while.   The konqueror browser 
> used to allow you to set the string in its configuration.  The Moz tool 
> is found here http://prefbar.mozdev.org/.
> 
> Now many people use Firefox or Safari and the web developers (correctly) 
> realized that saying a page had to be IE was not a good business move. 
> As standards have improved much of that fortunately has gone away.  I 
> had a site I used to visit regularly that was frames-enabled (remember 
> back that far---new frames), and if the http_user_agent string did not 
> equal the pre-IE browser or Netscape string the page would refuse to 
> load just showing a message to update your browser.   Well, konq could 
> handle frames at that time (and the web page developer did not use a if 
> (FRAMES) go X else go Y construct for the web pages)  so I just put 
> "Netscape" into the browers http_user_agent string and all the frames 
> pages loaded.
> 
> megan
> 
>>
>>
>> Nino
>>
>>
>> Megan Larko wrote:
>>> Nino Pereira wrote:
>>>> List,
>>>
>>> What are the URLs?
>>>
>>> We deal with submitting proposals to NSPIRES.  That used to be an IE 
>>> (ActiveX) only set-up.   Mostly it is because the contractor who 
>>> coded the web site used Windows ActiveX and not a more publicly 
>>> available standard such as java code.
>>>
>>> If the site does not actually involve ActiveX, allow your browser to 
>>> "fib" and say it is "IE".  It's only a string and dumb programs don't 
>>> check further.
>>>
>>> megan
>>>
>>>>
>>>> two US Government web sites I need absolutely, positively insist that
>>>> they work only with Windows (XP or older, actually) as the OS and IE
>>>> as the browser. Nothing else will, apparently, pick up the subtle
>>>> commands that the Windows&IE combination reacts to.
>>>>
>>>>  From what I can tell, the maintenance of these sites is contracted
>>>> out to a Microsoft-only shop, or perhaps even to Microsoft itself.
>>>> Some people at these sites bemoan this limitation, others don't
>>>> care, but the problem is: I have to ship files back and forth from
>>>> my linux machine to an old, marginally useful Windows box that I had
>>>> sitting in a corner somewhere, a real pain.
>>>>
>>>> Can anyone recommend a way to get around these limitations, or,
>>>> if this doesn't exist, an article that tells me what is so special
>>>> about Windows that it doesn't play nice with others?
>>>>
>>>> Thank you,
>>>>
>>>> Nino
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> Novalug mailing list
>>>> Novalug at calypso.tux.org
>>>> http://calypso.tux.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/novalug
>>>
>>>
>>>
> 
> 
>