GMX webmail limited functionality

[puppyX]

Win 7pro, Pale Moon 31.2.0.1 64bit

I signed in to my GMX account today and was given this notice;

gmx.JPG

So they have gone over to the dark side and now, it only gives limited access to the tools.

Anyone else seen this ?

[Moonchild]

If they support Firefox 33+ then using Pale Moon should not, at all, be an issue.
Did you perhaps set your user agent compatibility mode to "Gecko" or "Native"?

[puppyX]

PM always running in firefox compatibilty mode. I re-enabled javascript = no good. Ran in safe mode = no good. Turned off uBlock and self-destructing cookies = nope.

I can access the full GMX webmail with Linux Trisquel, Abrowser (firefox).

I don't know whether this is a browser thing or a Win 7 issue. My system is up to date security wise.

Thanks.

[Moonchild]

Maybe also ask GMX about this. As said there should not be an issue with Pale Moon given the support ranges mentioned.

[frostknight]

This sounds very much like:

We don't support palemoon because it has standards type issue or google chose to do this type thing.

It could,be both though, given google marks you as an enemy...

[puppyX]

GMX still only allows the basic login screen with my Win 7 pro (64bit) laptop. They did email and say that it should've been fixed but;

gmx1.JPG

They also asked me to inform them if I'm still having trouble....waiting for a reply.

[pale guru]

Workaround is to use a designated email program with

ingoing servcer (SMTP): port 587 (STARTTLS, TLS oder Verschlüsselung)
outgoing server (IMAP): port 993 (SSL oder Verschlüsselung)

Sylpheed for example can also be setup with filters to delete their spam (newsletter etc) right away.

[Swicher]

I think I've figured out why GMX blocks Pale Moon (and why you can't fool the site by pretending to be another browser like Chrome).
When you log in, the following happens:

1. https://login.gmx.com/login is loaded.
2. You are immediately redirected to https://navigator-bs.gmx.com/login?ibaInfo=...
3. Inside the page, a script is loaded from https://s.uicdn.com/pos-cdn/polaris/23. ... tection.js which although it is obfuscated, I discovered that it has a link that leads to https://modernizr.com/download/?beacon- ... setclasses which allows to generate what appears to be a checker to determine if the browser has the following:
   • Cookie support.
   • Custom Elements API.
   • Beacon API.
   • Fetch support.
   • URL parser.
   • URLSearchParams API.
4. Then a POST request is made to https://epimetheus.navigator-bs.gmx.com ... edetection where the following is sent:
   {"meta":{"brand":"gmxcom"},"counters":[{"name":"detection_result","event":"***","device":"desktop"}]}
   Where *** can be one of the following values:
   • supported
   • unsupported_nocookies
   • unsupported_lightmailer
   • unsupported_nolightmailer
   • unsupported
5. From here it is not clear to me what happens, but I guess that depending on the content of the previous request it redirects to the normal mail or to the light version.

Unfortunately I have not been able to discover how to bypass this check.

[moonbat]

Block uicdn and see what happens.

[puppyX]

When uicdn is blocked using uBlockorigin 'my filters', the site seems to be blocked (GMX), no entry.

uicdn.JPG

[puppyX]

GMX and uicdn - both German ? - GmbH Gesellschaft mit Beschränkter Haftung (German:Limited Liability Company; business entity)
Tried blocking the name servers with uBlock - didn't work.

https://www.whois.com/whois/uicdn.com

uicdn1.JPG

[Swicher]

Block uicdn and see what happens.

What I did was to add the following filter to uBlock:

Code: Select all

s.uicdn.com/pos-cdn/polaris/23.3.0/dist/js/feature-detection.js*$script,domain=navigator-bs.gmx.com

Since uicdn.com seems to load a lot of webmail components, blocking the entire domain would be impractical.
When logging in again, this time the page gets stuck at https://navigator-bs.gmx.com/login?ibaInfo=... but checking the source code of it, I noticed the following (the parts with [REDACTED] were edited for privacy reasons):

Code: Select all

(function() {
            try {
                window.addEventListener('DOMContentLoaded', function() {
                    var fd = new FeatureDetection({"brand":"gmxcom","userAgent":"[REDACTED]","serverTests":{"browserversion":true,"notmobile":true},"redirectUrl":"\/halogin?ibaInfo=abd%3Dtrue&auth_time=[REDACTED]&edition=us&usertype=standard&lang=en&uasServiceID=mc_starter_gmxcom&ott=[REDACTED]","targetUrl":null,"lightMailerUrl":"https:\/\/lightmailer.gmx.com\/start?device=desktop&ott=[REDACTED]","monitoringSampleRate":1,"monitoringUrl":"https:\/\/epimetheus.navigator-bs.gmx.com\/monitoring\/featuredetection","deviceClass":"desktop"});
                });
            } catch (err) {
                location.replace('https://lightmailer.gmx.com/start?device=desktop&ott=[REDACTED]&hint=unsupported');
            }
        })();

After doing some tests with that code snippet, I could make this userscript (to install it you need Greasemonkey for Pale Moon):

GMX_feature_check_bypasser.user.js

That tricks the validator into believing that the browser is supported and redirecting the page to webmail.
Unfortunately only this is loaded:

And the following appears in the console:
TypeError: window.customElements is undefined
I tried installing Palefill but the result is the same.

[moonbat]

TypeError: window.customElements is undefined

In that case you're SOL because Pale Moon doesn't support custom elements and no polyfill or UA override or user script is going to fix that.

[davesnothere]

TypeError: window.customElements is undefined

In that case you're SOL because Pale Moon doesn't support custom elements, and no polyfill or UA override or user script is going to fix that.

So to turn the question upside down, would it be safe to say that the only Mozilla-based browser which does currently support customElements is FireFox, and only if it is a new enough version ?

Someone reported to me in another forum that FF 73 works, also FF 78 ESR and FF 91 ESR.

[moonbat]

You'll have to confirm versions in a Firefox forum, this isn't one.

[puppyX]

[/quote]
In that case you're SOL because Pale Moon doesn't support custom elements and no polyfill or UA override or user script is going to fix that.
[/quote]

Certainly seems to be the case. Win 11 with edge browser works. Linux Trisquel with Abrowser works. Oh well, I mostly collect emails using an email desktop client on my Win 7 machine.

[davesnothere]

In that case you're SOL because Pale Moon doesn't support customElements, and no polyfill or UA override or user script is going to fix that.

Certainly seems to be the case. Win 11 with edge browser works. Linux Trisquel with Abrowser works.

Oh well, I mostly collect emails using an email desktop client on my Win 7 machine.

I have been doing that more than I used to as well [Thunderbird], and occasionally use the limited UI which GMX is offering to those who cannot access their full UI, to do certain tasks.

That said, many of the GMX settings screens are not accessible thru either of those methods.

There are certain things which I cannot adjust for my GMX account, which I occasionally need to adjust.

I still like Pale moon for plenty of other reasons, so it's a shame to have to use another browser to get support for customElements, and/or whatever else may be the reason that this is happening to us.

Sorry if I am coming across aggressively for someone who has not participated here a lot, but as I posted in another thread today :

During the last year alone, several sites which are important to me have gone down the drain which we can call customElements, and if I have noticed several, then surely there have been plenty of other sites which matter to other folks, which have suffered the same fate.

Whose cage should a person be rattling about this ?

Websites are not going to halt and reverse the implementation of that code simply because MCP and associates have not been supporting it.

[moonbat]

Whose cage should a person be rattling about this ?

This may sound very radical, but have you considered using a backup browser? I've had IE as the backup in the old days(2002-11) when Firefox was worth keeping as a primary browser and now Chrome derivatives are doing a better IE to the browser market than IE ever could dream of.

[davesnothere]

Whose cage should a person be rattling about this ?

This may sound very radical, but have you considered using a backup browser? I've had IE as the backup in the old days(2002-11) when Firefox was worth keeping as a primary browser and now Chrome derivatives are doing a better IE to the browser market than IE ever could dream of.

I HAVE been doing that.

But the way that things have been going lately, my backup will soon become my primary, with more and more sites presenting code which Pale Moon [and in most cases also Basilisk] cannot handle, whether it be customElements or some other alleged 'feature'.

I'm already part way down the rabbit hole, and trying not to fall any further.

[moonbat]

Well, depends how mainstream you want to go. I stay off Google/Facebook and social media and use Interlink for mail and an RSS feed reader for news so that's two categories right out. Still plenty of websites outside the big tech companies that work fine.