16 Aug
2004
16 Aug
'04
11:26 a.m.
-----Original Message-----
From: cctalk-bounces(a)classiccmp.org
[mailto:cctalk-bounces@classiccmp.org]On Behalf Of Jules Richardson
Sent: Monday, August 16, 2004 6:46 PM
To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts
Subject: Re: [OT] Help with question about web page access
On Mon, 2004-08-16 at 22:27, O. Sharp wrote:
The ServerVariables collection is part of the Request object that is sent
Jerome H. Fine wrote, in part:
Hard to say without seeing the web-site in
question, but at the least
(from your description) it sound like they haven't got their various
"what-browsers-are-acceptable" pages in sync. I'd be annoyed if I were
you. :)
I'd be annoyed if I were me, too. Wait - I *am* me! :-)
We're moving our library around, so my
relevant books are hiding; but
from memory, yes, it's possible. HTTP requests are sent with a
handful of
environmental variables, including brand and
version of the browser
making the request.
USER_AGENT rings a bell for some reason, but I could be making that up.
Somewhere on the web exists a site where when you visit the page it just
dumps out all the data sent by your browser to the server. Unfortunately
I never ever bookmark it because each time I need it I never think I'll
need it again - d'oh! Anyone? from the web browser client to the web server. It
contains a number of
variables that supply information about the user. Here are a
few sites
that supply a little intormation on the ServerVariables. I've used these
variables frequently on commercial sites that I've built for companies
like Ford, Sears, Schwab, etc., where they had much commercial red tape
and corporate rules about how to build a web site and what browsers
were to be supported, etc. These things come in handy when you need to
know the browser type, referring URL, client's IP address, etc. There
are also ways to tell the client's screen resolution, color depth,
whether they can run java script, use cookies, etc.
Take a look at the following sites, which explain in a little more
detail.....
http://www.newobjects.com/pages/alpdocs/ref-Request-ServerVariables.htm
http://www.w3schools.com/asp/coll_servervariables.asp
http://www.asp-help.com/objects/intr5vsj.asp
http://www.microsoft.com/windows2000/en/server/iis/default.asp?url=/windows2
000/en/server/iis/htm/asp/vbob5vsj.htm
http://www.4guysfromrolla.com/webtech/092298-3.shtml
This link will display the current ServerVariables collection, as
sent by your browser:
http://www.4guysfromrolla.com/demos/servervariables.asp
..... Ashley
<rant>
O'course, I've long held the opinion that - except in the cases of
multimedia-bells-and-whistles websites, which are by their
nature heavily
dependent on what the receiving browser can
handle - designing a site
that requires "Browser X" to be readable is both counterproductive and
against the site's own interest. Why put together a web presence at all
if you're going to bar a bunch of potential readers from seeing it at
the outset? Why make an effort to communicate your message to
the world if
you're simultaneously going to put up a
technology barrier to make sure
half the people you're trying to reach can't access it? If
you're
going to
write something, don't you want people to
_read_ it?
</rant>
Yep, you and a huge amount of other people - unfortunately it hasn't
filtered through to the moron brigade it seems (who typically code for
and test on IE, probably using Frontpage in the process... ugh)
Anyway, it may be simplest to just bite the
damnable lead
bullet and get
a browser upgrade. Mozilla's Firefox may be
the way to go:
Didn't Jerome imply that he couldn't upgrade or install anything
different on this platform?
Otherwise, yes I agree. My personal favourite's Opera as the download is
tiny compared to other modern browsers, plus you can tell it to identify
itself to a remote server as a few different browsers which can help
access broken sites. And it's incredibly fast at page rendering.
By the way Jerome, are you sure that you haven't just got some junk left
in your browser's cache (cookies or content) that are causing problems?
The fact that you said you can authenticate against the site and bring
the initial page up but then not see any content beyond that could also
be down to a cache problem. Try shift-reload on an offending page and
see what it does if you haven't already; from memory with that version
of Netscape it should force a reload of the page from the server.
cheers
Jules