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Thread: Microsoft.com and Opera Conflic... Evil scheme?

  1. #1
    Old-Fogey:Addicts founder Terr's Avatar
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    Microsoft.com and Opera Conflic... Evil scheme?

    Well, surfing to www.microsoft.com in Opera 5.12, something weird happens whenever I click a link in the left menubar area. Some funny Javascript stuff happens, and Opera starts trying to reload the page hundreds of times a minute. The "stop" button doesn't affect it. Needless to say, this renders the current Opera window a tad unusable, and bandwidth is eaten.

    In the main page, the code for the link I clicked (happens with some others) is:

    Code:
    </td></tr></table>
    <table width="176" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" border="0"><tr><td class="flyoutLink"
    onclick="Flyout_S3_Node1.click();">
    <A onclick="javascript:trackInfo(this);" LinkArea="Flyout"
    ID="Flyout_S3_Node1" LinkID="Flyout_S3_Node1"
    HREF="http://support.microsoft.com/directory/">
    Support</A>
    Opera seems to indicate that it is trying to load the href= referenced address. But it keeps doing it over... and over... Now, if I enter in http://support.microsoft.com/directory/ all by itself into my address bar, it works without a hitch. Therefore I think the problem is with the javascript, and more specifically, in the javascript:trackInfo(this); section, because the function trackInfo(); is found within "ctredir.js", sounds like redir is for 'redirect' to me...

    Code:
    <BODY onload="loadPage(100, 1000);"
    BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF" TOPMARGIN="0" LEFTMARGIN="0"
    MARGINWIDTH="0" MARGINHEIGHT="0" TEXT="#000000">
    <script language="JavaScript" src="/library/include/ctredir.js">
    </script>
    Which, as you can see, is loaded. Now, WITHIN ctredir.js, I find:

    PHP Code:
    function trackInfo(objLink)
    {
        if (!
    objLink) return;
        if (!
    objLink.LinkID || !objLink.href) return;
        
        var 
    LinkText = (objLink.innerText)?objLink.innerText:objLink.all(0).alt;
        if (!
    LinkText  || typeof(LinkText)=="undefined") return;
        
    LinkText jsTrim(LinkText);
        if (
    LinkText=="") return;
        
        
    // override link's HREF and send on its way
        // For Link Text - take innerText if available, or ALT if image
        // Sometimes with slow browser reaction and rapid clicks this can get called more than once -
        // ensure there's no repetition.
        
    if (objLink.href.toString().indexOf("CTRedir") < 0)
            
    objLink.href "/isapi/CTRedir.asp?type=CT&source=WWW&sPage=" 
            
    + ((objLink.LinkID)?escape(objLink.LinkID):"") + "|" 
            
    + ((objLink.LinkArea)?escape(objLink.LinkArea):"") + "|" 
            
    + ((objLink.LinkGroup)?escape(objLink.LinkGroup):"") + "|" 
            
    escape(LinkText)
            + 
    "&tPage=" objLink.href;

    Anyone have some Javascript experience, and could possibly enlighten me on this? AFAIK this is new, I don't recall having major problems with M$'s site with Opera before.

    Edit: Edited so smileys are disabled... one or two weird things caused by them, also tried to remove the super-long lines that extended browser windows.
    [HvC]Terr: L33T Technical Proficiency

  2. #2
    Senior Member
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    Posts
    752
    I tried the same thing, and couldn't get the same results, and I am running 5.12 as well.

  3. #3
    hmm..that's odd

  4. #4
    Hey Terr check this out it was in the news 2 weeks ago and I put up the thread

    http://www.antionline.com/showthread...hreadid=126218

    Basically it's Microsoft's way of eliminating competition by not letting certain browsers have access, but if you notice you use IE it works perfect.

    Could you e-mail me that code So I could look at it, I find that very interesting, that is happening.

  5. #5
    Junior Member
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    yeah, you also can't access hotmail.com with Opera, also I had some problems when making pages with Frontpage that it wouldn't load the webpage untill i removed the little frontpage tage out of the top of it.
    \" If U Can Think It It Can be Done \"

  6. #6
    AO Antique pwaring's Avatar
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    Aug 2001
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    1,409
    A press release from Opera tells all. It appears MS is using JavaScript to bar access to all it's sites from users with non-MS browsers.

    Basically, MS is using some clever JavaScript to detect your browser and either direct you to the page you are looking for (IE) or send you somewhere else (netscape, opera etc.). This piece of JavaScript is fairly easy to make and can be extremely powerful because your browser by default sends out a string of text to identify it to the server.

    The text string is used by servers to ID the browser, and if you view the httpd.conf file installed by Apache you will find that it has a legitimate use for the code - to ID browsers that do not send proper http1.1 headers. However, JavaScript can use this in any function to cause an action on the client side (e.g. open a new window, or in this case redirect you to a different page).

    I personally use Konqueror most of the time, except at college where I have to use IE. It is possible in Opera to change the text string sent out by the browser to allow access to IE-only sites - in fact MS themselves once used this trick when Netscape was the most popular browser!

    Hope this helps, sorry if it seems a bit long-winded and ranting.
    Paul Waring - Web site design and development.

  7. #7
    Didn't someone early say that.
    Jusk kidding well terr there is your double check to see what is going on.

  8. #8
    Senior Member
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    well i can't be sure, but it looks, from what i can tell, that they are using the navigator.appName part of javascript, i can't remeber what you need to change in the files, (allthough i am pretty sure that you can do). i will however resaerch an have a look for you.
    And yes i know that this has already been said, but what the hell.
    There\'s no sense in being Pessimistic...it would never work anyway.

  9. #9
    Senior Member
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    484
    Well, I just went to the site and the same ****ed up reload thing happened to my Opera browser. I did read that article freeOn put up, sorta skimmed it actually... Isn't it illegal for Microsoft to do shady stuff like that?...and I don't remember, does Opera have an upgrade for it?
    Why am I still here?

  10. #10
    Senior Member
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    831
    An interesting note:
    I read the article that pwaring posted and followed the link to the XHTML page... and my IE6 shat itself.. couldn't render crap....

    To Microsoft: Who Doesn't support XHTML?!?!
    -Matty_Cross
    \"Isn\'t sanity just a one trick pony anyway? I mean, all you get is one trick. Rational Thinking.
    But when you\'re good and crazy, hehe, the skies the limit!!\"

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