All Unkept
Posted in: KDE, Linux, Rants  —  23 August 2007

Facebook broken in Konqueror

A recent update on Facebook has rendered various bits of the site unusable in Konqueror, including the 'Add to friends' link. Since this is a pretty crucial part of Facebook, I think I am justified in the overblown title to this post.

(For the interested, Konqueror reports this error: Error: http://static.ak.facebook.com/js/base.js?12:56066: ReferenceError: Can't find variable: eval)

Of course, I could file a bug report with them. I'm not going to bother, because I already did so for one bug, and the response I got back included this:

Please note that we only support the browsers listed below and strongly recommend that you update your browser to the newest version available.

The browsers listed were:

Internet Explorer 6.0
Internet Explorer 7.0
Safari
Firefox 1.5 for PCs
Firefox 1.5 for Macs
Firefox 2.0 for PCs
Firefox 2.0 for Macs

This kind of thing gets old pretty fast (I had a similar problem with my online bank just the other day). Konqueror is an absolutely great browser, and being told to get a newer browser is the last thing I want to hear. Konqueror integrates brilliantly into the rest of my KDE system (think KWallet for all my passwords, kioslaves for just about everything,...) and I'm not going to change for Facebook. It is just such a pain in the neck that Konqueror has such a low market share (I can't wait for Konqueror to use WebKit).

At the end of the day, contrary to what many web developers and browser writers would like you to believe, quality and standards compliance mean nothing -- Konqueror is easily as good as Firefox, but people don't design to standards, they design to what the major browsers can do. De facto standards rule the roost, and the only thing that matters is market share.

The only reason I'm bothering to post this is I figure I might actually generate more attention this way than filing a bug report.

Comments §

§ On 23 August 2007, Anonymous Coward wrote:
248 The right strategy for a minor browser is to emulate the behavior of either IE or Firefox.

No browser has ever been 100% "standards compliant", and that's ok!
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§ On 23 August 2007, James Hollingworth wrote:
249 Hi, have you done much web development? it is the worst thing in the world, every browser supports different parts of the javascript/css specifications and then each browser has their own interpretation of what the standards mean. For every change, they have to test every thing in every browser, testing once is annoying, testing 7 different times is getting pretty stupid. In the end, although Konqueror is a brilliant browser, the percentage of people that use just isn't enough to make them want to test it 8 times. facebook developers are like any other developer, lazy
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§ On 23 August 2007, Anonymous Coward wrote:
250 Wow I'm glad to see someone out there gets it, I think there are far too many people especially open source natzi's that think if we all followed the standards everything would be ok but they don't understand that web developers design for the end user and not some standards body.

As a web developer I get so pissed off with the "Why does this not work in my version of Netscape" people
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§ On 23 August 2007, maht wrote:
251 If you posted the bug here properly, someone might have fixed it by now.
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§ On 23 August 2007, Observer wrote:
252 "The only reason I'm bothering to post this is I figure I might actually generate more attention this way than filing a bug report."

Looks like all you got was a bunch of Youtube-style comments :-)
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§ On 23 August 2007, Pupeno wrote:
253 I think you are showing the wrong attitude by saying "Facebook is broken in Konqueror". Either Konqueror is broken or Facebook is.
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§ On 24 August 2007, Dean Edwards wrote:
254 I think this is a Facebook bug. They delete eval from Object.prototype. I imagine that also removes it from the global object and it becomes undefined. Object.prototype is verboten! ;-)
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§ On 24 August 2007, luke wrote:
255 maht: I have actually posted all the details of the bug -- you click the 'Add to friends' link, and nothing happens. Konqueror has a 'bug' icon showing the error I posted.

James Hollingworth: Yes, I have done quite a bit of web development, and I know what an absolute nightmare it is. The point I'm making was more from a users point of view -- it doesn't matter that I've got a really good browser, sites still get broken. I'm not really criticsing the Facebook developers, as I've been there myself, but I'm trying to dispell the myth that standards solve these problems. These days, not many people can get away with using the subset of browser functionality that is both explicit in the standards and correctly implemented in all the major browsers.

Pupeno: I don't think it is that simple. As soon as you stray from a very basic subset of HTML, there is no browser that correctly implements all the standards. If you use the <button> tag, for instance, which has been in HTML for decades, your site will be broken in IE. The developer may say that it is IE that is broken, but it's totally irrelevant -- as far as the end user is concerned, it's the website that is broken.

Dean Edwards: Yes, I noticed this, I've no idea why they are deleting this object.

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§ On 28 August 2007, Anonymous Coward wrote:
257 Konqueror is one of the most standards compliant browsers out there. I use it for everything, and I avoid sites that are broken.

Facebook used to work, then it broke. Hopefully someone will fix it up.

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§ On 28 August 2007, Eduardo wrote:
258 Luke, I see that Konqi usually gets rejected in most Ajax web apps. Is KHTML/KJS naturally Ajax incapable, or it's just a result of developers' narrow minds?
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§ On 2 September 2007, luke wrote:
259 Eduardo: no, Konqi manages AJAX just fine. The problem appears to be that the Facebook code is randomly deleting Object.prototype.eval (some random debugging code that got left in?). I think Konqueror is behaving correctly by removing the global 'eval' function.

There are also problems with browser sniffing -- lots of developers just don't take Konqueror (or Opera for that matter) into account. If you avoid browser sniffing, and random stupid code, there is usually no problem.
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§ On 9 September 2007, Matthew K Poer wrote:
263 Wow, I thought I was going crazy. I knew Facebook was working before in Konqueror. I am really happy to find out some one else has had this problem.
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§ On 13 September 2007, Matthew K Poer wrote:
265 I think Facebook fixed the problem. I can write on walls and update my status in Konqueror, now.
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§ On 14 September 2007, luke wrote:
266 Matthew: I eventually wrote them a detailed bug report, and they replied much more positively this time, so they may well have fixed it.
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§ On 18 October 2007, Taina Girl wrote:
277 My profile has an Ajax or FBML related bug. I have sent the facebook team screenshots of the bug and all they say is to use standard browsers. The irony is that I am using the latest versions of IE, Opera and Firefox on 2 different computers and the profile still looks broken. I have to use an old computer that is never updated, and there it works fine.
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§ On 30 September 2008, Stefano Gargiulo wrote:
360 Konqueror a great browser? maybe one time... likes links was great..


konqueror is the most bugged js/css browser in my opinion..

and some are serious bugs:

have you tried to do an ajax request over https in an apache-auth proteced site?

the result is that konqy ask me for an authentication for each ajax request.. but i've already logged in... and dulcis-in-fundi i can't insert an username or password and i go blocked.

whay is the problem?

the session is not well sent in ajax reqs by konq? i don't know and i don't want to know.. i'm an ajax developer, and i can't debug my applications in each fu****n browser spending 99% of the dev-time in finding patches..

we needs standards..
we need that the thusands of browser dies or follow the leader (not only littles browser like konq.. aslo IE was non ajax complaiant, and in fact, now it is following Firefox..)

konqueror has a lot of javascript and css bugs.. i hate it.
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§ On 14 October 2009, S Barringer wrote:
495 Date is 14 Oct 2009
    My Facebook page is broken now. It started on the weekend and just gets worse. It started out with my not being able to access my inbox on Facebook. Then, I couldn't post anything. Then various other links wouldn't work. I'm running Firefox 2.0.0.4 and it's been working up until this weekend. There have other glitches in Facebook, and I'm about to just drop trying to use it. Other social websites work just fine with this browser, so I'm going to drop Facebook. I can't even use the "help" link to directly contact someone so I can resolve the problem. What a useless mess.
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§ On 2 November 2009, ycl wrote:
501 One of the biggest benefit of webapps is no installation required. There are thousand of webapps and I have made a webapp to search all iphone apps easily on iphone. The application list is updated daily from Apple website. It includes all apps approved and rejected by Apple. It is designed specially to use on the iphone so that you can get the application you want instantly.

If you are rejected by Apple to list your application, you can submit your iphone webapps at <a href="http://ipoh.blogdns.com/">http://ipoh.blogdns.com/</a>. It is 100% free and searhable. Please make an introduction to your work at the forum.

All are welcome!
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