[WEB4LIB] Netscape 6 and FirstSearch

[Darryl Friesen]

> Is anyone getting into FirstSearch with Netscape 6 or Mozilla?  OCLC seems
> to have a browser sniffer that screws up, overlooks your valid IP, and
> sends you to a password login screen.  Thanks for illustrating why relying
> on browser sniffing is bad.

I don't think it's browser sniffing that's causing the problem.  There's
been quite a bit of discussion on the SiteSearch mailing list (SiteSearch
and FirstSearch seem quite similar, so I'm betting it's related) about the
way SiteSearch forms URLs (something about Netscape encoding  the ":" used
in the SiteSearch/FirstSearch URLs and SS/FS not decoding them).  I'm not
clear on whether it's a Netscape bug, or a problem with SS/FS.

Just a guess, but a reasonable one I think.

- Darryl

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  Darryl Friesen, B.Sc., Programmer/Analyst    Darryl.Friesen at usask.ca
  Education & Research Technology Services,     http://gollum.usask.ca/
  Department of Computing Services,
  University of Saskatchewan
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  "Go not to the Elves for counsel, for they will say both no and yes"