Bug in the forum tools (used to be) dropdown?

NogDog

Has something changed in the forum software very recently? Now when I'm on a given forum page, the "forum tools" link at the top just jumps to the bottom of the page instead of providing the drop-down menu of options it used to give.

NogDog

Nevermind...sort of. Turns out the change was due to me messing around with the user agent string sent by my browser. Apparently the JavaScript code or whatever does not build the menu if the user agent is unrecognized.

stolzyboy

quit messing with stuff 🙂

NogDog

I had just read something about some sites that apparently block Firefox users because of some ad blocking add-on (and they also apparently think they can make up for the supposed advertising income loss from that by simply rejecting a non-trivial portion of the web community instead of rethinking their advertising methods), so I was looking into how to change the user agent header that FF sends. I had it set to something meaningless like "None of your &%*#ing business". Apparently the JS on PHPBuilder that controls the drop-downs does a user agent check, and the default must be to not create a drop-down.

I personally don't use AdBlock, but I do use FlashBlock as I simply hate animations and/or sounds on web sites unless I'm expecting and want them. (FlashBlock let's you activate any Flash object on a page at your discretion.)

JPnyc

But we're not blocking FF (or any other browser)

NogDog

Nah, I wasn't doing it for this site or any other site -- I haven't run into any such Firefox rejecter during my surfing so far. It was just that the discussion had made me curious as to how you change the setting, so I searched and played around with it until I figured it out. Then I forgot I'd done it, came here, and suddenly the drop-downs weren't there any more. Then a couple minutes after I posted this thread, the light bulb went off over my head and a "Doh!" was heard.

bpat1434

Comcast has a firefox blocker. If you try to log in to your comcast.com account, the AJAX they use doesn't work with firefox, so you can never log in 🙁 Stupid catering to IE.....

NogDog

Heh! Now you've added another reason to the list of why I don't like Comcast. (That's why I get my TV by satellite and internet by DSL. 🙂 )

JPnyc

If my understanding is correct, some websites are blocking Firefox because of its ad blocking capability. That really doesn't make sense to me, because nowadays most every modern browser has ad blocking and pop up blocking capability. For that matter, so does pretty much every firewall and Internet security suite.

NogDog

Yeah, I really think the person with that web site about it is either (a) sadly misguided, (b) a shill for M$, or (c) an internet "troll" of sorts just seeing how much traffic he can get to his site. (My money is on "c".)

Anyway, I'm not going to lose any sleep over it -- I've got plenty of other worries for that. :rolleyes: Anyway, I've now learned how to use "about:config" in Firefox. 🙂