Formatting buttons don't work in Opera.

September 12, 2005 4:29 PM

Them purdy buttons. Bold, Italic, Link, Spellcheck. I use Opera. I can see them (and they work great, too) if I connect using an ssh tunnel & web proxy (I use the SSH Express service from cotse.net). I do not see them if I turn my proxy off. Whassup? The fancymatic preview works whether I use the proxy or not, so apparently it's just the button bar that's discriminating against my naked Opera.
posted by evariste to Bugs at 4:29 PM (13 comments total)

The proxy is probably using a user agent that MetaFilter recognizes as a browser that supports the buttons. Tell Opera to use an IE or Mozilla user-agent.
posted by kindall at 4:52 PM on September 12, 2005

your proxy must be hiding your user-agent
posted by mathowie (staff) at 4:56 PM on September 12, 2005

Opera identifying as Mozilla: no buttons.
Opera identifying as MSIE: no buttons.
:-(
posted by evariste at 5:06 PM on September 12, 2005

Yeah, it looks like my proxied/tunneled useragent ends up as:

Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; www.cotse.net)

Matt, since Opera can show them and they work, can you get rid of the useragent thingie?
posted by evariste at 5:09 PM on September 12, 2005

odinsdream-no, but I can probably do it with Proxomitron. But I don't have it installed on this computer and I'm too lazy to go grab it.

When I have no proxy, and Opera identifying as Mozilla, I get User-Agent=

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 5.1; U; en)

Opera 8.02. Opera identifying as MSIE, User-Agent=

Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; en) Opera 8.02

So clearly the code is searching for the string "Opera" and being mean to it.
posted by evariste at 5:13 PM on September 12, 2005

Sorry, poorly-placed line break. It should be...

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 5.1; U; en) Opera 8.02

...for my Opera in Mozilla drag useragent.
posted by evariste at 5:14 PM on September 12, 2005

Ok, try now.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 7:52 PM on September 12, 2005

Still nothing when identifying as Opera, unless I'm hiding behind my proxy.
posted by evariste at 8:04 PM on September 12, 2005

OK, also nothing when identifying as Mozilla, but it does work when identifying as MSIE.
posted by evariste at 8:05 PM on September 12, 2005

Can you make opera transmit no user agent?

You can have Opera transmit anything. See the detailed .ini explanation at Opera.

I suggest you look into using the user javascript functions to override the agent string for only MetaFilter; that way, other sites will continue to see the real thing.
posted by five fresh fish at 9:20 PM on September 12, 2005

ok, so evariste, can you show me your unedited user-agent when surfing a default copy of Opera 8?

And then your user agent when using your crazy proxy setup?

I couldn't tell what was what according to what you posted earlier.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 10:08 PM on September 12, 2005

The button bar doesn't work on these two:

Opera's standard user-agent:

Opera/8.10 (Windows NT 5.1; U; en)

Opera pretending to be Mozilla:

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 5.1; U; en) Opera 8.10

The button bar currently works on these two:

Opera pretending to be Internet Explorer (only works since you said "OK, try now"):

Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; en) Opera 8.10

Any browser on my machine, through an ssh tunnel, through Cotse.net's proxy (always worked):

Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; www.cotse.net)
posted by evariste at 12:20 AM on September 13, 2005

I like odinsdream's idea. Maybe if you test for whether the browser supports document.getSelection()
posted by evariste at 12:49 PM on September 13, 2005