Pale Moon forum

Posted: **2020-07-30, 09:04**

So this is strange. As an experiment I tried to click on a "Buy it Now" link while in Firefox Compatibility mode with no custom UA overrides for eBay. It gave the access denied error. Then I copied the exact user agent of Firefox compatibility and made a custom override for pay.ebay.com with it and it worked. I didn't have to remove "PaleMoon" from it or anything.

Edit: Alright, so I was relying on Google to tell me my user agent, but Google has an override by default. So it appears it's the Goanna line of the Firefox compatibility that it's taking issue with. Native mode works fine as well so it isn't an issue with Goanna specifically.

Edit2: Wrong again. It doesn't care about Goanna. It doesn't like the Firefox version 68.9.

Posted: **2020-07-30, 09:21**

Moonchild wrote: ↑
2020-07-29, 22:00
How about contacting eBay and letting them know they are, likely unintentionally, blocking a legitimate browser based on user agent?

You say this often when users here are met with the constant UA discrimination crap from one site after another. It's in fact what should be done, but I'm of the opinion that if we Pale Moon users truly want change to happen it's gonna take a battalion of renegade Pale Moon users to make that change happen. It will have to be a well organized attempt with steadfastness, dedication and good leadership. In essence, this is the mantra of some political groups and it's exactly how things do get changed. Just a few emails here and there from a few people isn't going to sway a big time Silicon Valley company. It's a start, it's the noble thing to do, but I'm saying it has to be with sheer force and with an almost scorched earth policy.

Lets face it. None of these idiots (my humble apologies to those CEOs with kiss my ass money... not!) care about us. They don't give one iota of a crap about some niche browser when there's stupid people all over hell using Chrome, Firefox, Edge, or Safari. In this day and age, if it isn't mainstream, then it's, do I dare say, "blacklisted?"

Posted: **2020-07-30, 09:28**

Cassette wrote: ↑
2020-07-30, 09:04
So this is strange. As an experiment I tried to click on a "Buy it Now" link while in Firefox Compatibility mode with no custom UA overrides for eBay. It gave the access denied error. Then I copied the exact user agent of Firefox compatibility and made a custom override for pay.ebay.com with it and it worked. I didn't have to remove "PaleMoon" from it or anything.

Edit: Alright, so I was relying on Google to tell me my user agent, but Google has an override by default. So it appears it's the Goanna line of the Firefox compatibility that it's taking issue with. Native mode works fine as well so it isn't an issue with Goanna specifically.

Edit2: Wrong again. It doesn't care about Goanna. It doesn't like the Firefox version 68.9.

I go to useragentstring.com to make sure the UAs I use are correct in how a website sees me. Though, as of this post the site isn't loading for me now. I've used that site for years.

I've wondered if eBay was performing a little website code feng shui based on my observations the last couple of months, and now with these posts it seems to be true. Never mind the websocket crap they are now doing. I haven't bought from eBay in a month, so this UA crap must be a relatively new thing. Or at least I haven't had any issues with a blatant "you shall not enter" banner in my face.

Posted: **2020-07-30, 09:36**

The key is to make sure the site you're using to see your User Agent doesn't have a UA override you're unaware of. For a second I wondered if there wasn't some not visible UA for eBay coded into Pale Moon that was overwritten when I made a custom one for it. Unless I've done something else foolish, I'm fairly certain it's the Firefox version number only causing the problem.

Posted: **2020-07-30, 09:53**

John connor wrote: ↑
2020-07-30, 09:21
You say this often when users here are met with the constant UA discrimination crap from one site after another. It's in fact what should be done, but I'm of the opinion that if we Pale Moon users truly want change to happen it's gonna take a battalion of renegade Pale Moon users to make that change happen.

THEN GET TO IT!

Posted: **2020-07-30, 10:36**

If large companies, like Weather, YouTube and eBay do not want to serve niche browsers, then they won't no matter how much complaining is done be it in one email or 200 (or more) emails. I don't think these website maintainers care about niche browsers (like Pale Moon) at all.

The people who maintain these sites for browsers, they want to make the least amount of work for themselves as possible. So in their minds; they've decided for people to use their website, they will force people to use the (windows and linux) browsers for Chrome (and it's various like copies), Chromium, ChromiumEdge, Firefox and Safari.

My wife has an eBay account. I do not. She and I both use 64 bit linux Pale Moon with 64 bit linux Firefox as the backup browser. Since this is a Windows topic thread concerning eBay and Pale Moon, the next time my wife makes a purchase on eBay, instead of using 64 bit linux Firefox to complete the purchase, I will try and make a linux user agent for (pay) eBay using linux Pale Moon and see if it works for her. If it does, I'll post it in the Bug Reports (Linux & other) Forum even though it is not really a bug.

But I don't know when that will be so it might be awhile. If it doesn't work, I post that too. Then she will just have to complete her purchase for eBay from now on using linux Firefox.

Posted: **2020-07-30, 10:53**

I'd think ebay will WANT to serve as many browsers as possible because every user not being able to make a payment is immediate revenue lost for them. and it takes only a handful of people not making purchases to pay for that "extra" work (or rather removing a stupid check)

Posted: **2020-07-30, 11:15**

Moonchild wrote: ↑
2020-07-30, 09:53

John connor wrote: ↑
2020-07-30, 09:21
You say this often when users here are met with the constant UA discrimination crap from one site after another. It's in fact what should be done, but I'm of the opinion that if we Pale Moon users truly want change to happen it's gonna take a battalion of renegade Pale Moon users to make that change happen.
THEN GET TO IT!

You first, El capitan.

El capitan wrote:I'd think ebay will WANT to serve as many browsers as possible because every user not being able to make a payment is immediate revenue lost for them. and it takes only a handful of people not making purchases to pay for that "extra" work (or rather removing a stupid check)

You're seriously underestimating the absolute brilliance that is company decisions. In a nutshell, it's one step forward, two steps back. Never mind the effects of their bottom line.

Posted: **2020-07-30, 11:30**

eBay is a very large company. It makes tons of money every minute of every hour, every hour of every day, every day of every week, every week of every month, every month of every year, year after year. I don't think eBay will care if they lose a little bit of money over some niche browsers.

In my way of thinking, I think people will continue to use eBay and if they have to use one of the "approved browsers such as Chrome, Firefox etc", people will use these browsers and not niche browsers.

eBay thinks it's users are like sheep and the company will lead these people around "with a ring through their noses" because people are addicted to eBay and the people will comply.

In my mind, this is along the similar lines of what YouTube did when YT decided people were going to use YT's new interface. People bitched and ranted because they preferred the old classic interface. YouTube was counting on people not abandoning YT and people didn't.

This is what eBay is basically doing. eBay is counting on people using one of the approved browsers to make their purchases and not abandon eBay. And I think people will comply. To put into perspective in the light of day; if someone is looking for an item they want or need and they find it on eBay for sale, does anyone think those people will pass it up because they prefer to use a niche browser? I don't think this will happen.

My wife didn't pass the item up she needed and has been looking for all over the internet and ran across the item on eBay. Since she couldn't use linux Pale Moon to complete the purchase, she completed the purchase using 64 bit linux Firefox (78.0.2) since linux Firefox 79 hasn't been available to users of linux Mint in Mint's respository as of this post.

Posted: **2020-07-30, 11:45**

John connor wrote: ↑
2020-07-30, 11:15
You first, El capitan.

I literally can't do everything myself. Not unless you know how to duplicate me a few times.
But if this is the attitude in what is supposed to be a cooperative community, then I'll say fuck it, and everyone can stop complaining that "it doesn't work".

Posted: **2020-07-30, 13:06**

"How about contacting eBay and letting them know they are, likely unintentionally, blocking a legitimate browser based on user agent? "

clearly you are not an ebay user. i've searched all over for information to contact ebay and nothing shows up. the vast majority of their contact help is about buyers or sellers
however this website has more contact information
https://ebay.pissedconsumer.com/customer-service.html

Posted: **2020-07-30, 13:08**

You know nothing about me. I am an ebay user. Have been for 2 decades.

Posted: **2020-07-30, 13:34**

eBay - Help & Contact (top left of page) > Buying > Checkout, scroll to bottom, should see phone and live chat options during business hours. Or try the community forum, they have a website technical problems section in there somewhere. Or just click on the feedback button on some relevant page, it will get read but you won't get a reply. And remember you are talking to a general help agent, not a software developer, but it doesn't mean it won't get passed on. Plus it can take months for things to get fixed on eBay, the sell an item button at the top hasn't worked since they did the last big redesign and various site links go to strange or non existent places.

Posted: **2020-07-30, 15:06**

@ Cassette

I know you made a user agent over ride for windows Pale Moon for eBay and you said it works so I am taking your word on it. I say this since I do not use 64 bit windows Pale Moon anymore since I don't hardly ever use 64 bit Windows 7. The reason being, I use 64 bit linux Pale Moon running in 64 bit linux Mint.

Your user agent code works, but that "71" version is very old and may not last at eBay's constant tinkering. I have made a user agent over ride for 64 bit Windows 7 by just modifying your version number so if you want to see if works, try mine.

Code: Select all

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:79.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/79.0

BTW, I made a user agent over ride for 64 bit linux Pale Moon in another forum which is below.

viewtopic.php?f=57&t=24913

Posted: **2020-07-30, 19:17**

Night Wing wrote: ↑
2020-07-30, 15:06
Your user agent code works, but that "71" version is very old and may not last at eBay's constant tickering.

That is probably true. I haven't taken the time to figure out the exact last version that works. That was merely the version that the Google.com UA override uses so I went with it. Even if I update the version to the current Firefox ESR version 68.11 it still gives the error and it made me wonder if Firefox ESR 68.11 could access the page. I tried it and it worked, but the version number in its UA is 68.0 and there doesn't appear to be any overrides for ebay set up so I don't know why it works.

Yes, changing the Firefox version to 79 also works. I even used it on the following and it works.

Code: Select all

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:79.0) Gecko/20100101 Goanna/4.6 Firefox/79.0 PaleMoon/28.11.0

Posted: **2020-07-30, 21:33**

Cassette wrote: ↑
2020-07-30, 19:17
Even if I update the version to the current Firefox ESR version 68.11 it still gives the error and it made me wonder if Firefox ESR 68.11 could access the page. I tried it and it worked, but the version number in its UA is 68.0 and there doesn't appear to be any overrides for ebay set up so I don't know why it works.

Possibly Ebay doesn't like having anything other than zero after the decimal point, because the FF version number in actual Firefox user agents is always *.0, no matter what the point release. So Ebay might see *.9 (or *.11) in the user agent as somehow "not right".

It's rare for a site to react to this, but I'm pretty sure it's come up at least once before where a Firefox string in an override had to be vanilla.

Posted: **2020-07-30, 21:46**

A little extra UA testing:
Standard Pale Moon unstable ua:
From google: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:71.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/71.0 PaleMoon/29.0.0a5
Elsewhere: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:68.9) Gecko/20100101 Goanna/4.6 Firefox/68.9 PaleMoon/29.0.0a5

Standard Firefox
Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:79.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/79.0

ESR versions from AUR
firefox-esr-pt-br-bin-68.0.1-1
Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:68.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/68.0
Buy it now worked.

firefox-esr-bin-78.1.0-1
Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:78.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/78.0
Buy it now worked.

I then tried adding the Pale Moon useragent to Firefox ESR 78 with these overrides:
general.useragent.override.ebay.com Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:68.9) Gecko/20100101 Goanna/4.6 Firefox/68.9 PaleMoon/29.0.0a5
general.useragent.override.ebay.co.uk Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:68.9) Gecko/20100101 Goanna/4.6 Firefox/68.9 PaleMoon/29.0.0a5
Both worked and went to the checkout page.
Then I added
general.useragent.override Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:68.9) Gecko/20100101 Goanna/4.6 Firefox/68.9 PaleMoon/29.0.0a5
for a universal override, and I successfully got it to fail:
Access Denied
You don't have permission to access "http://pay.ebay.co.uk/rxo?" on this server.
Reference #18.260e1002.1596144900.2884eee4

Posted: **2020-07-30, 21:54**

coffeebreak wrote: ↑
2020-07-30, 21:33
Ebay might see *.9 (or *.11) in the user agent as somehow "not right".

That appears to be the case. The Firefox ESR 68.11 UA used for the UA override for eBay allows it to work. Perhaps the Firefox compatibility UA should be changed to just 68.0 so it's more standard.

There is a about:config setting that allows that change. general.useragent.compatMode.version. I've changed it to 68.0 and eBay works without an override. I will leave it at the setting and see if it causes any problems, but I don't expect any for changing it from 68.9 to 68.0.

Posted: **2020-07-31, 02:08**

Thanks for the solution, it works here after I changed the compatMode.version to 78.0 (latest FF ESR) in unstable Pale Moon.
I'll have to reset it back to default to get updates on the value when this is ultimately resolved or it'll stay like that until it's obsolete if this profile isn't replaced first.
(I also "updated" the 71.0 in the google.com and gstatic.com ones to 78.0 as it seemed more aesthetically balanced but that was random tinkering.)

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