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by SoftTalker 1492 days ago
Often, just changing the user agent string so that Firefox appears to be Chrome will let those sites work. I.e. they work fine in Firefox, but are restricted by user agent string checks to reject that browser and/or OS.

There are several plugins for Firefox that make this easy.

2 comments

I wonder if those plugins are causing Firefox's marketshare to appear worse than it actually is.
I've used Firefox and Mozilla for what, 20 years? And I've never bumped into a situation like this. Some very clearly shit internal IT systems had pathetic IE requirements, but never one that said sorry go get chrome
They don't always say "go get chrome" but one example that still happens to me is logging in to Outlook email at work, if I use Firefox I get a hobbled "basic HTML" interface, if I masquerade as Chrome on Windows I get the full UI and it all works perfectly.

Google drive is another one, where some things stop working depending on the user agent I'm presenting.

My health insurer won't let me login using Opera, a Chromium based browser, and suggests I install Firefox or... Chrome.

UA sniffing is soooo 2008.

Microsoft Teams also does this. Google meet used to do it too.
I have a randomized user agent and I occasionally see sites refuse to deliver a page because they think a particular browser won't work.