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  • Subject: New Site Design
Subject: New Site Design
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Unfortunately its called upgrades. It eventually happens with all software. The old stuff is eventually mad to be incompatable. This then forces you to upgrade. I dont really know why but i had to upgrade my flash player for the site to look normal with netscape. I cant stand IE.

  • 04.06.2006 1:45 PM PDT
Subject: New Site Design
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Bungie,
What were you thinking? The site now tells me I am using the site in a "downgraded display" mode and hides most of the navigational tools. The site works fine in FF 1.5 on Debian Linux when I modify my user-agent to claim to be IE. Why not let the users decide which version of the site to use. Or better - why not follow web standards such that any modern sane browser interprets the site properly?

[Edited on 4/6/2006]

  • 04.06.2006 1:38 PM PDT
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This post has been approved by atomic weggie.

Posted by: atomic weggie
ZD: Real name is Zebediah Dingleberry. Once ZD’s rock band makes the big time, all we’ll have left of him is his insatiable love of BBQ corn nuts and some guy named People’s Champ.

Unfortuntely, you are misunderstanding DV's problem. The site renders just fine if you "fool" it to make it think you are using IE....even if you are not. So they are deliberately forcing Linux Firefox users (doesn't happen to me on windows using FF 1.5.0.1) to use a "downgraded" version (ie - basically no styles) version of the site.

  • 04.06.2006 1:49 PM PDT
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That doesn't make any sense. I am using a modern fully compliant browser on a modern operating system.Its not an issue of the product being old, the product processes the page fine. The issue is that bungie is intentionally detecting the browser/OS which happens to present the greatest threat to their parent company and provide a significantly downgraded user experience. I have to ask "Why?"

  • 04.06.2006 1:51 PM PDT
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Posted by: DigitaVengeance
That doesn't make any sense. I am using a modern fully compliant browser on a modern operating system.Its not an issue of the product being old, the product processes the page fine. The issue is that bungie is intentionally detecting the browser/OS which happens to present the greatest threat to their parent company and provide a significantly downgraded user experience. I have to ask "Why?"


relax there cowboy. there could be many possible explanations. lazy

  • 04.06.2006 2:02 PM PDT
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relax there cowboy. there could be many possible explanations.

Sure, but the "downgraded display" banner was clearly intentionally created for use for *someone*. If its a simple bug that FF 1.5/Linux is seeing it, then my post can serve as a bug report. If its something more, then its good to find that out and find out exactly why a perfectly compliant browser is being treated as a second class citizen.

  • 04.06.2006 2:08 PM PDT
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This post has been approved by atomic weggie.

Posted by: atomic weggie
ZD: Real name is Zebediah Dingleberry. Once ZD’s rock band makes the big time, all we’ll have left of him is his insatiable love of BBQ corn nuts and some guy named People’s Champ.

I really hope that someone (probably Achronos) looks at this, cause I'd like some answers. I really love Bungie and wouldn't think they'd do something like this on purpose but now I just don't know...

I've also found now that if you use Firefox (even on windows) the page renders with a different CSS file than with IE. The problem is the same as DV's - the page rendering this way actually causes the browser to slow down - especially when scrolling. However, when I simply change my user agent to that of IE 6 (fooling the server) - it works fine. So why force Firefox users to use the "bad" CSS file? Odd, I'd say.

Like I said, hopefully we can get this cleared up. I'd hate to have to switch my user agent every time I visit the site just to make it a more pleasent experience. God knows I'm not going to start using IE...

  • 04.06.2006 2:25 PM PDT

Tom Achronos
Bungie.net Overlord
twitter: http://twitter.com/Achronos

"I have no words that would do justice to the atrocities you commit to the English language, as well as your continued assaults on the concepts of basic literacy and logical reasoning."

When we upgraded the site recently, we updated to ASP.NET 2.0, the framework this site runs on. This allows us to do lots of cool things behind the scenes. However, one of the changes in ASP.NET 2.0 is that it detects browsers differently than the old ASP.NET 1.1 code did.

While we do test for such things, the problem you see is due to the fact that the only version of Firefox that is "officially" supported is the 1.5 Windows release. By "officially" supported I mean that we test to make sure it works. If you're running on Linux, that means that we didn't test your browser before releasing (we can only test so many browsers, and our Linux userbase is tiny). You probably could get the site to appear if you modified the User Agent string to match that of Firefox on Windows - that would probably look better than forcing it to be IE.

That all being said, I do agree that it is rather silly that it is blocking your browser. Bungie.net is meant to be open to as many browsers as possible. It is on the list of things to fix, but I'll admit the priority is rather low. The good news is that in the future, we'll be modifying our browser detection code substantially to better "bucket" your browser and be much less prone to dumping you into the downlevel display.

Oh, and as for the "bad CSS file"... we aren't deliberately slowing down Firefox, and we do follow web standards - otherwise that navbar wouldn't work cross-browser. While it is possible there is a bug there, it is more likely that sending it the IE CSS files and javascript would manifest unusual bugs here and there (I was not the UI developer, so I don't know specifics without reviewing the code). Unfortunately, that CSS was written before Firefox 1.5 came out, so it is entirely possible that the CSS and/or javascript needs updating. It is on the list of things to do, but such low-level changes are time consuming and are often done inline with a UI refresh. So... eventually.

[Edited on 4/6/2006]

  • 04.06.2006 7:15 PM PDT

$x='print chr(36),"x=",chr(39),$x,chr(39),";\n",$x; ';
print chr(36),"x=",chr(39),$x,chr(39),";\n",$x;

I work at Microsoft. I have nothing to do with Halo and nothing I say is "the official word".

Posted by: DigitaVengeance
The issue is that bungie is intentionally detecting the browser/OS which happens to present the greatest threat to their parent company and provide a significantly downgraded user experience.

Conspiracy theories don't help anyone, even if it is rather stupid that it will not allow a particular browser to display the site correctly. And I will agree it is pretty annoying.

[Edited on 4/6/2006]

  • 04.06.2006 8:11 PM PDT

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Posted by: Achronos
While we do test for such things, the problem you see is due to the fact that the only version of Firefox that is "officially" supported is the 1.5 Windows release. By "officially" supported I mean that we test to make sure it works. If you're running on Linux, that means that we didn't test your browser before releasing (we can only test so many browsers, and our Linux userbase is tiny). You probably could get the site to appear if you modified the User Agent string to match that of Firefox on Windows - that would probably look better than forcing it to be IE.
Actually I experience it too, although not very often. I got it a multitude of times in IE while you were doing the actual upgrading, but since I have not. I use Ubuntu 5.10 Linux (It's another Debian kernel)with the Gnome 2.12.1 desktop environment primarily on my other computer, the one I most frequently use, and I'm using Firefox 1.5.0.1 on it. I experienced it once or twice after the upgrade was finished, and if I'm not mistaken someone on your team is looking at it. I have not been able to replicate the Downgraded Display malfunction (is it really?) under the same version of Firefox under Windows XP Pro Media Center Edition, but I'm trying to. I have not, however, experienced it since the last time, so I'm going to assume that something has been done in regards to that. I will say though, that I experience a fairly "Bug free" Bungie.net, now that I'm running FasterFox 1.0.3, and the only real difference I notice between viewing on Firefox and IE6 is the background image doesn't lock in Firefox, it tiles. Which kind of looks odd under the scroller dock, but doesn't affect anything. I turned off the Smooth Scrolling option and it actually seems to scroll better.

That all being said, I do agree that it is rather silly that it is blocking your browser. Bungie.net is meant to be open to as many browsers as possible. It is on the list of things to fix, but I'll admit the priority is rather low. The good news is that in the future, we'll be modifying our browser detection code substantially to better "bucket" your browser and be much less prone to dumping you into the downlevel display. You might actually want to consider some minor alterations to the Downgraded Display anyway. On my Linux machine, when I try to make a post, the javascripted buttons (Submit, Preview, etc) are often hidden under the form. you can still access them via the TAB button, but it's still a pain in the butt.


[Edited on 4/6/2006]

  • 04.06.2006 8:29 PM PDT
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This post has been approved by atomic weggie.

Posted by: atomic weggie
ZD: Real name is Zebediah Dingleberry. Once ZD’s rock band makes the big time, all we’ll have left of him is his insatiable love of BBQ corn nuts and some guy named People’s Champ.

Well, that's just awesome. Thanks so much, Tom, for taking time out of your busy day to answer our questions!!

The IE CSS issue really isn't a huge deal, as I was just being nitpicky. ;) And I understand the woes of cross-browser support; I am (as is DV) a web developer myself. Although I've never seen an issue with the site in Firefox when using the IE CSS (by switching my user agent), I can understand the need to test something like that before just taking one user's word for it. ;)

Good luck, and thanks so much for continuing to make this site a better place for us all! Now just get a forum search in place, and I'll be happy, haha.

  • 04.07.2006 9:31 AM PDT

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Posted by: Genuine fat air
I have a suggestion. Download a different browser.



People use Firefox because of it's security and platform support. Especially people like the original poster, and myself, who use Linux, Firefox is more fully featured than most of our alternatives. And IE based browsers won't work without some serious fiddling. Secondly, why would a website be made that can only use one or two types of browser? Sure, it can be optimized for one or two of the most used ones, but too much optimization for a single platform, and it becomes unusable for many others. For example, the MSN website simply won't work in Firefox by itself. It severely limits the control that the user has over his machine, and on things like Windows Update, to get security updates for your computer, you have to use their branded browser.

  • 04.08.2006 3:01 PM PDT