NFN Smith wrote on 08/01/2020 01:43:
Ant wrote:
SeaMonkey v2.49.5 uses a very old Gecko web engine based on Firefox v52. Lots of web sites don't support that old.
At least they claim not to support that old.
I've found that with spoofing, that if I give a site a UA string showing Gecko
60 or 68 from Seamonkey 2.49.5, I generally don't have problems. If I have
problems, it's far more likely to be other tweaking that I've done, such
blocking stuff with NoScript and/or uBlock Origin, blocking tracking, refusing
third-party cookies, etc.
I'm sure that there's sites out there that really require something newer than
Gecko 52, but I think that they're very few, and I can't remember seeing them.
Where I've seen sites complaining about Seamonkey 2.49.5/Gecko 52 is usually
coming from scripting that's doing UA sniffing. With NoScript active, I rarely
see any of that, because the scripts never run (and can't check). There are a
handful of sites that won't give me what I want without enabling the scripting
that does sniffing, and for that, spoofing generally does what I need.
For sites, the issue is generally not that they *can't* handle Gecko 52, so much as it is that they want users running newer browsers, because older ones do have known security holes in them. Unfortunately, the number of Seamonkey users is small enough that at sites doing checking, the owners don't know (or don't care) that Seamonkey is actively being maintained, despite showing Gecko 52. I've noted before that I see that happening most often with sites for financial providers. For good measure, the
people providing help at various sites are likely to demand specific browsers (and versions), because it streamlines the support process (again, financial providers are the most aggressive). For Seamonkey, they don't care that it's a functional equivalent, just that the different UI layout is enough that they don't want to be bothered with trying to figure out where a particular setting is.
All that said, I do know that if I'm spoofing, it's definitely possible that
the site really does require something specific to Gecko 60, but that's on me,
and I'm not going to go to the site's support and complain that things aren't
working because of how I'm using Seamonkey. If I'm having problems, I can
either go to a profile where the only tweak I make is for spoofing, or I can
launch Firefox from a profile that doesn't have a lot of tweaking.
Smith
Thank you for taking the time to write such a detailed answer, very useful and
much appreciated.
BR,
R. Furb
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