GUI only partially works with Mozilla Seamonkey

[hjheins]

Mozilla Seamonkey is based on Firefox ESR 60 fundamentally works as a browser, however on certain websites, parts of it are not displayed well.
I am having this issue also on Moode: some pages, like the radio station selection, work just fine, but others, like the tag library view, show nothing at all; the outline is there, but all the music is invisible.
I am guessing this is due to some limitation of the browser.
What has changed please since version 7 of moode, and is there something I can do to get the functionality back?

Screenshot to show what is visible:




thanks,

Hendrik-Jan

[CallMeMike]

Have you tried other Internet browsers...? If YES, have you encountered the same problems..?...other problems?

I've noticed that Seamonkey is an 'all-in-one Internet application suite" and the latest version has been released on the 28th of December. An 'all-in-one' project is a very ambitious endeavour and its separate applications may not be at the same technology level as the standalone applications from well-known companies (even the stable mate Firefox).

By the way, the current MoOde version is a version 7.xx albeit 7.6.1

[TheOldPresbyope]

@hjheins

I don't use Seamonkey (haven't had anything to do with integrated internet suites like it in nearly 20 years) but a quick search of their forum suggests at least one problem with many sites is that they don't recognize its useragent string. [No flame wars, please, about how site developers should or shouldn't treat useragent strings!]

If you can get to a web developers console in Seamonkey then you can examine the error messages to see if a useragent-related message appears when you browse to the moOde WebUI.

For this problem alone, you could experiment with Seamonkey config strings such as general.useragent.override to spoof using some other browser known to work. On my Linux Mint laptop, both Chrome and Firefox work well with the moOde WebUI. The current versions advertise themselves as

Chrome

Code:

Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/96.0.4664.110 Safari/537.36

Firefox

Code:

Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Ubuntu; Linux x86_64; rv:95.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/95.0

You could try overriding the Seamonkey useragent string with the equivalent from a browser of yours that works and see if the situation improves. Apparently, entering the url about:config in Seamonkey will take you to the page of currently defined strings. Search their support page for specifics about entering, say, a general.useragent.override string. (One can also override for specific sites, but that is problematic on a home network where there may be multiple players or odd DNS arrangements.) 

I notice one of the Seamonkey forum posts references a database of more that 700K useragent strings detected just from Firefox browsers in the wild!!!!


Regards,
Kent

PS - an easy way to detect the useragent string of a browser is to visit the site: https://wtools.io/check-my-user-agent

[TheOldPresbyope]

@hjheins

Addendum: of course you'll likely see lots of other warning and informational messages in the browser console. From my position as a dilettante rather than an accomplished developer, I have a hard time tracing back to root causes.

Good hunting.

Regards,
Kent

[hjheins]

Hi Kent,

thanks a lot for going in depth here!
my userstring is:

Code:

Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:68.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/68.0 SeaMonkey/2.53.10.2

which actually does refer to the correct Firefox version.
The browser that I have that works is actually a Firefox:

Code:

Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:95.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/95.0

I will check with swapping these out.

Hendrik-Jan

P.S. yes I know the concept of the suite is ancient, but based on the memory footprint and functionality, for me it makes no sense to have both a Firefox and a Thunderbird running if I can have both in 1 package...

[hjheins]

double post, sorry

[hjheins]

OK, I put my Firefox useragent string in Seamonkey, and I checked with wtools.io.
However no change in behaviour. I am actually suspecting that we have a script in moode somewhere that is not running on the "old" Firefox that is in Seamonkey.

I remember vaguely of seeing a post here on the forum about this for another browser, but I can not remember or find it anymore.
The fix in that post was some change in the code, adding an exception for that browser/useragent...

Hendrik-Jan

[TheOldPresbyope]

OK, I put my Firefox useragent string in Seamonkey, and I checked with wtools.io.
However no change in behaviour. I am actually suspecting that we have a script in moode somewhere that is not running on the "old" Firefox that is in Seamonkey.

I remember vaguely of seeing a post here on the forum about this for another browser, but I can not remember or find it anymore.
The fix in that post was some change in the code, adding an exception for that browser/useragent...

Hendrik-Jan

Ugh. I was hoping it wouldn’t come to this (but I’m not surprised it did). Trying to find specific work-arounds for variant behavior in various browser Javascript engines is a thankless task for site developers. I’ll slink back into my corner and hope someone more enlightened about the subject steps up.

Regards,
Kent

[the_bertrum]

Just checking the obvious....
have you tried clearing the browser cache?

[hjheins]

Just checking the obvious....
have you tried clearing the browser cache?

Hi the_bertrum,

I did, I even generated a new user profile to make sure.