Recommended Posts

Hey, today i noticed that google loads in nightly the old-fashioned search in nightly. I tried with a new profile too. It doesn't happen in Aurora, nor in Chromium, nor in IE9.

Some screenshots:

err2.PNG

Also in the italian version the logo is loaded incorrectly:

err1.PNG

This things make me realize how bad looking the internet was in the past :)

Google often use cookies to set how the site should appear to you when they are testing stuff (for example if you get the new Google bar or not). In this case, it appears your Nightly has somehow got one to give you the old design, which must be some sort of error on Google's end. Nice to see though!

Google often use cookies to set how the site should appear to you when they are testing stuff (for example if you get the new Google bar or not). In this case, it appears your Nightly has somehow got one to give you the old design, which must be some sort of error on Google's end. Nice to see though!

I thought that too, but after deleting the cache and cookies nothing changed

I got the same problem in nightly but changing the user agent fixes it for me. In about:config add "general.useragent.override" and string value "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:10.0.2) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/10.0.2" or whatever previous version of firefox.

Websites sometimes appear differently on other browsers and they detect that by sniffing the user agent. Try using iPad safari browser user agent and you can emulate googles iPad layout on firefox.

Mozilla/5.0 (iPad; U; CPU OS 4_3 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8F190 Safari/6533.18.5

edit:

It appears that today's nightly changed user agent formatting. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=588909

old nightly: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; rv:13.0a1) Gecko/20120217 Firefox/13.0a1

today's nightly: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; rv:13.0a1) Gecko/13.0a1 Firefox/13.0a1

This broke the google. So temp workaround is to manually change user agent or wait for google to fix it on their end.

The probably used that part of the useragent to detect if the rendering engine is modern enough for the standard design otherwise it will revert back to the old for compatibility reasons. The changing of the date format broke this backwards compatibility (Better to use dates than version numbers it would be simpler to do when Nightlies are involved which won't have a predictable version number)

Hey, today i noticed that google loads in nightly the old-fashioned search in nightly. I tried with a new profile too. It doesn't happen in Aurora, nor in Chromium, nor in IE9.

Some screenshots:

err2.PNG

Also in the italian version the logo is loaded incorrectly:

err1.PNG

This things make me realize how bad looking the internet was in the past :)

How bad looking it was? What's bad about that? It's called simple and simplistic and it loaded very fast too, I bet, which is how I wish it still was instead of all the bloat/crap Google has on their page and in their browser!! I'm not complaining about the speed of Google loading, but if everyone was still using dial up, I'd bet there be more complaining about it then?

90% of the reason I WILL NOT use anything Google!! It IS NOT the greatest thing since the wheel, or internet!! Google sucks green donkey d**k!!

How bad looking it was? What's bad about that? It's called simple and simplistic and it loaded very fast too, I bet, which is how I wish it still was instead of all the bloat/crap Google has on their page and in their browser!! I'm not complaining about the speed of Google loading, but if everyone was still using dial up, I'd bet there be more complaining about it then?

Nowadays version is minimalistic and loads almost instantly.

Just when you couldn't hate mozilla any more than you currently do.

They go and change this, which adds zero benefit but ****s every standard up.

Oh way to go...

What utter tosh. Why not actually read the bug ticket? UA strings are hardly a strict standard, as it is (and have a loooad of historical complexities around them). Sites should be feature sniffing, not browser sniffing. Do you have much experience with how UA strings work?

As it is, it's not going to stay broken/weird for long. Google is likely thinking the browser version is much older than it is.

"Sites should be feature sniffing, not browser sniffing. Do you have much experience with how UA strings work?"

Guess you've never been a web developer in your entire at all then.

Javascript comes with chome, firefox, etc. yes. A lot of browsers do not have javascript support (lynx, links, etc.), or have it disabled (no$cript).

This is just plain badly written code on Google's behalf, instead of checking for the version of the browser they check for the date it was compiled on, which is pretty damn meaningless (You could have a lower version with a higher build date, etc.) There's a reason Mozilla froze that date to be 2010-01-01 with 4.0, to discourage this, Google is just apparently slow to notice.

Edit: Ahh, I see the JS angle then. Still, your site shouldn't rely on JS to function and this is a server side issue on Google's behalf, not a client side issue.

"Sites should be feature sniffing, not browser sniffing. Do you have much experience with how UA strings work?"

Guess you've never been a web developer in your entire at all then.

Javascript comes with chome, firefox, etc. yes. A lot of browsers do not have javascript support (lynx, links, etc.), or have it disabled (no$cript).

It's not an either/or situation, though - browsers inherently without JS support could still be UA detected. I don't have much sympathy for people who would noscript Google - of course you're going to lose features that way. Just like if I turn off CSS, sites will also look fairly weird - but I'm not going to complain about it. (Turn off the scripts you don't want to run, for sure, but turning off *all* scripts and expecting everything to be okay is over the top)

There's many articles online about browser and feature sniffing, and the benefits of each - but they pretty much always come down on feature sniffing. I know browser sniffing is commonly used, but that doesn't make it good.

Besides, that's not a defence of your original comment at all, which was that somehow it was all Mozilla's fault.

This topic is now closed to further replies.
  • Posts

    • App, useful & Teams shouldn't be used in the same sentence.
    • New Outlook for Windows and Web is getting a simple but very useful email feature by Sayan Sen Recently Microsoft put up a blog post highlighting not one, not two, but 15 total reasons why it feels you should switch to New Outlook already. If that was not enough, the company is bringing another new feature soon that could finally compel you to switch over to the new app. According to a recent update on the Microsoft 365 roadmap, the tech giant is making changes to how message sorting works when users choose criteria besides the traditional options of From, Subject, or Date Received. The idea is to provide better options for the attribute being used for sorting and make it easier to understand why messages appear in a particular order. For those unfamiliar Outlook already allows users to sort emails using a variety of fields including sender, category, importance, subject, and message size. Users can access these options through the Filter menu in Outlook for Windows and Outlook on the web. With the upcoming change, whenever users sort by a field other than From, Subject, or Date Received, Outlook will automatically display an additional column showing the value being used for the sort. For example, if messages are sorted by Size, a Size column will appear in the message list, allowing users to immediately see the data that determines the ordering of emails. Microsoft believes this should make sorting behavior simpler and reduce the need to manually adjust views or inspect individual messages. Support for sorting by Flag Due Date is also coming and should be especially be helpful for users who rely on email flags to manage follow-up tasks and deadlines. The feature is listed under Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 564803 and is expected to reach general availability beginning later this month itself (June 2026). You can find the entry here. As always though, users should keep in mind that roadmap timelines can change and rollout schedules may occasionally be adjusted by Microsoft. Outlook for Web is also set to receive this feature.
    • That is true. but the liability side of my balance sheet is clean and has been for decades.  Nobody comes a knocking,  calling or writing harassing me for the money i owe them.😎👍  Haven't dealt with "a money changer" in decades and like Jesus it was in Jerusalem.  Don't have much money, but have even less stress in my life.👍👍     P.S.  Sorry, can't walk on water or change it to wine,  
    • Maybe ? DLSS Swapper (can swap the DLSS/FSR/XeSS versions) as long as the game (typically online/competitive) doesn't checks for file tampering. You can try different version(s) or update if not the current version of the FSR. https://github.com/beeradmoore/dlss-swapper
  • Recent Achievements

    • One Month Later
      DJC50PLUS earned a badge
      One Month Later
    • Week One Done
      DJC50PLUS earned a badge
      Week One Done
    • Proficient
      Eric Biran went up a rank
      Proficient
    • Dedicated
      Conjor earned a badge
      Dedicated
    • Week One Done
      Windows Guy earned a badge
      Week One Done
  • Popular Contributors

    1. 1
      +primortal
      492
    2. 2
      PsYcHoKiLLa
      248
    3. 3
      Steven P.
      71
    4. 4
      +Edouard
      70
    5. 5
      ATLien_0
      68
  • Tell a friend

    Love Neowin? Tell a friend!