Looks like Microsoft is up to its old tricks: the latest AJAX-enhanced version of Hotmail refuses to work if the web browser identifies itself as Firefox 2; if one reconfigures it to identify itself as Internet Explorer, it works perfectly. What does this mean? Well, given that Microsoft are likely to buy Yahoo! (a lot of analysts now rate Yahoo!'s chances of escaping their clutches as slim), taking control of Flickr and del.icio.us, those who use those sites from non-Windows, non-IE platforms, and with non-Microsoft web applications, have yet more reasons to feel uneasy.

Posted by: Peter | http://www.frogworth.com/blog/ | Sun Feb 10 07:36:37 2008

This is misleading. I was going to comment saying I had no problem the other day when testing a hotmail account for a new signup system at work. As the post makes clear, it's only if the browser declares itself itself to be Firefox 2 for Linux, it seems, that there's a problem (i.e. it looks like if you configure it to say it's Firefox (2) for Windows it's fine too) - and even then, people have said it's not a problem. I'm not booted into Ubuntu right now so I can't test it myself, but it certainly works in Firefox 2 for Windows. Microsoft can be scummy, it's true, but it's not really a good idea to just believe all the nonsense you read... :P

Posted by: Peter | http://www.frogworth.com/blog/ | Sun Feb 10 07:37:28 2008

Is there a way for me to get line breaks into my comments here? Testing, testing. Line-breaks stripped?

Posted by: acb | http://dev.null.org/acb/ | Sun Feb 10 15:04:45 2008

Sorry, line breaks are broken, and I haven't yet had the time to fix them. I'll do so soon, though.

Posted by: acb | http://dev.null.org/acb/ | Sun Feb 10 15:07:32 2008

Microsoft have a long tradition of using dirty tricks and coercion against competitors and customers respectively. When they acquire Yahoo (which looks increasingly likely), it's unlikely that Ballmer will allow del.icio.us and Flickr to keep playing nice with rival web sites (through their APIs), or indeed for non-MS customers to keep using these services. Sooner or later, the Berlin Wall will go up and those on the eastern side of it will be fux0red.

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