Author: JT Smith
IBM.com does not support Konqueror 1.9.8, a recent version of the web browser that comes packaged with KDE.
When Konqueror is pointed to www.ibm.com, the site redirects to wireless.ibm.com and then displays the following error message:
This browser is unsupported. The current supported browsers are: UP.Browser (HDML) Nokia (WML) AvantGo (HTML) HandWeb (HTML) Palmscape (HTML)
IBM says it loves Linux but it evidently has no clue about what has to be one of the most popular Open Source web browsers. When asked about
the problem, an unidentified IBM spokesperson said, “Huh? Oh, I think our Linux people are
in charge of that.” No IBM-Linux people were available for comment.
NewsForge first became aware of the problem because of a post to the KDE developers mailing list. User “salvador” wrote, “I have used konqueror without difficulty on the ibm.com web site for months, and presumably this problem is simply that they are now using an application that uses http_referer to sort out wireless handhelds from ‘normal’ browsers, and they did not include
konqueror in the list of valid browsers.”
salvador aptly pointed out that the problem is the responsibility of IBM’s web development team, not the “Linux people.”
We tested results with several other browsers, including Opera, Mozilla, and galeon, and all loaded www.ibm.com successfully. It was also reported on the KDE developers list that some users of konqueror 2.1 were not having any difficulty loading the page, leading to speculation that a bug in konqueror 1.9.8 may be the culprit, instead of IBM’s webmaster.
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Category:
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