Original poster here.
I came across this when one of my friends accounts was clearly compromised. They posted one of those "OMG! LOOK AT WHO VIEWS YOUR ACCOUNTS!" on lots of friends walls.
I wanted to check out what this link actually did, so I did a simple:
But the wget failed because of the lack of a supported user agent, and Facebook instead served me up this page.
I really just had a little chuckle to myself, because, while this is extremely passive aggressive, it's not really hard to expect otherwise. I would do exactly the same if I were Facebook.
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I'm just suprised that they don't link to either webkit based browsers (Chrome/Safari). You can only assume that when one of your biggest threats is Google (and MS own 1.5%~) you probably aren't going to send more users to Google's way.
All in all, it just made me laugh, since if you are going to suggest a modern browser, you surely can't ever give props to Internet Explorer ahead of any webkit based browser? IE is still struggling to implement the most basic HTML5 features.
Seriously? Not really hard to expect otherwise? I guess it's ok then for Google to drop FB from its search results, after all it's one of its biggest threats, right?
> At least, there's no Facebook browser yet. But hey, it might happen as well.
They should buy Opera and open source it :)
No idea if that makes any sense for Facebook from the business point of view, but it’d be really cool. And they definitely can afford it.
EDIT: Now that I think about it, Facebook getting their own browser makes a lot of sense. They have a real chance of pulling off the mythical Social Browser.
Opera already has an extensive email client which they could integrate with Facebook Messaging, they have widget system which would also fit nicely with Facebook apps. Opera was always about integrated experience, full functionality out of the box, and Facebook could take it to the next level.
It’s most likely just a coincidence, but it was very eery seeing that post on the frontpage just a day after I’ve made that comment.
I’ve googled "Facebook+buy+Opera" that day to see if anyone had similar idea. The top story was something mentioning Facebook Opera in a literal sense, as an emotional roller coaster about some random privacy issue. 15 hours later, it’s all about the rumors. So weird! :)
Yep - I saw the headline and immediately thought back to your comment. And after reading the article, I wasn't convinced they had any substantive evidence. Either they thought the same thing independently or they simply crafted a news story from your comment!
All in all yes. Sure they put Opera in there but those are actually very common and well known browsers. You know... IE, Firefox. (and Opera is still quite well known).
That being said it's their little war for total web control (again client+server+data) which is really bad, and what I meant to express in the comment.
They don't control IE, Firefox, or Opera. This seems really like they are fighting against Google's war for total web control. Which I'll reiterate, is a good thing.
I'd be fine with that. In fact, it'd probably be an objective improvement with regard to my search results.
Not all of us believe search engines have some magical obligation to be complete or impartial. If you don't like the results you get from one, try another.
Agreed. The most frustrations I've had with google lately is when it assumes I care about some cluster of social chatter that vaguely intersects with my search terms.
For clarity: the link is to the generic "unsupported browser" landing page. Chrome (and Safari) are definitely "supported" browsers. Facebook just doesn't show their logos or provide a download link to them.
Exactly. They can suggest whatever browsers they want. Much like how Google suggests Chrome whenever any page with their logo loads. It's not like Facebook is saying if you aren't using on of these three browsers then we can't help you.
The page is STATIC. It isn't being generated based on any logic.
So the "you're" bit is vacuous. They don't mean your browser. They don't [functionally] mean any web browser. The page makes a statement, but we need to interpret that statement IRRESPECTIVE of our considerations of how it is generated/produced.
Needless, ridiculous, digressionist pedantry. The point was (and you can verify this yourself) that the page reports visually identical content regardless of which browser hits it. So it's not telling you that "your" browser is unsupported, it's a redirect target for some other page.
How do you know that Chrome and Safari are supported? Is there some documentation of this? A list somewhere? If so, Facebook should at least link to that page from here.
No surprise there; Opera's market share is small enough that FB can simply code to the standard and worry about explicitly supporting the major browsers.
Although interestingly, if Opera accounts for ~2% of FB users (big if), then FB would have 16MM Opera users. Using the average of $4/user/year, that means Opera generates $64MM for them. That would be more than enough to justify throwing a few devs at.
Edit: Also curious is the pointless URL that page has. I would have thought FB would be using basic SEO on their help pages, so that someone googling "facebook supported browsers" would have a better chance at ranking first (it does for me, anyway). As an aside, the sub's page is actually the second result.
I would actually posit that they make much less money per user from Opera than IE.
Ie the type of individual who would click FB ads (or spend money on virtual gardens) is more likely to use the Windows default browser.
Because chome is 1. quite new and 2. auto-updating without neither asking or notifying users (and that is G-R-E-A-T).
Safari I don't know, are FB obligated to inform people of every possible choise? Nope, they aren't. Now let's discuss something more interesting than this dull facebook page!
> Because chome is 1. quite new and 2. auto-updating without neither asking or notifying users (and that is G-R-E-A-T).
You know that, but there's no guarantee whatsoever that someone landing on this page knows that.
It's in FB's best interest to inform people of what works and what doesn't. They certainly don't test every single browser out there, so putting the browsers they test on onto this page keeps users on the happy path.
Yes. They just want to get those guys going who don't have a proper browser, without scaring them away with too many options. Something or the other has to be missed out - and that is okay - to be fair to all browsers is not the objective here.
It does seem kind of funny to point people to Opera over Chrome and/or Safari. If you're afraid of showing too many options, why wouldn't you just list the most popular two or three that you support? Chrome is, after all, more popular than Firefox now, and vastly more popular than Opera.
That page hasn't really done much for my opinion of Facebook. I constantly run into it when trying to access public static content with an "unsupported" browser.
I do not believe your post adds clarity. What MIGHT add clarity is something like, "Oh, this is an unfinished error page" or an accident.
Any Web developer knows that now it would take intention, effort, not to support Webkit browsers (Chrome, Safari). I mean, if we take your interpretation, we should assume that laptops support, say, USB1, 2 and 3. They just _don't show their female ports_ on the panels.
Can we just call a spade a spade? Otherwise the whole page itself is nearly meaningless. "Support" becomes a meaningless word.
Moreover, that's beside the point. It's CERTAINLY fair to suggest that to say the least, without much analysis, we can say that this page implies that FB [intends] a better experience on browsers which are not Chrome or Safari. THAT is fair.
And it's bloody absurd. Chrome is now No. 1. And they knew that long before StatCounter had anything to say about it. I won't say "let's face the facts and say FB has a bone to pick with Apple/Google." But please don't go the opposite end of the extreme to argue that, "Oh, no, this page doesn't mean anything. Obviously FB supports [JUST ABOUT EVERY OTHER BROWSER NOT ON THAT LIST.]"
I mean, c'mon... By this reason, FB supports Netscape 2, Firefox 3, Camino, Lynx, etc. etc etc.
You're misunderstanding me. I'm not taking a position here or making an argument. I added the post because the headline and several of the comments seemed to imply belief that Facebook didn't support Chrome. They do, that's not what the joke/link/point/whatever was about.
I understand your sentiment. If that's the case, our concern should not be "what browsers are on the list"? It should be, like with Y!: "What does FB mean by 'support'?"
"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."
Not to say that the people working at FB are stupid, but odds are that someone at FB made this page several years ago and this page has languished on the backburner with no attention since then.
I don't think this page wasn't updated for long time. It has IE logo of IE9+. So it was updated at least after IE9 release and by that time Chrome was major browser.
We had a similar page on a site I used to work on that mentioned Opera. I believe it was an error message you got when javascript was disabled. What was funny was that we did NOT support Opera.
It was brought up every release as a bug, but was always deemed to be a "not fix." I wonder if they ever took care of that.
I don't think it is unfair. The point is you'd always leave out something or the other. The objective is to get the person into a proper browser, without scaring them with way too many options - and not to be fully politically correct.
I'm not necessarily disagreeing with you, but I will say that I don't look at it from being fair vs. unfair. It's purely silly, based on Microsoft's and IE's browser credentials. IE is arguably the worst browser out there, and has been for some time. To see it first on a list of "we support these browsers" is comical.
As is including Firefox and Opera, but not the second most popular browser. Although it's very possible that they decided which browsers to include back in '09 or earlier and just haven't revisited the decision since.
Chrome and Safari are both missing, even though they're the two most modern browsers available today. All the browsers they're suggesting are way behind WebKit-powered Chrome & Safari in terms of HTML5 support.
I can see why they wouldn't include Safari--it's not very good for Windows and anybody on Mac OS has it already (and probably up to date?).
Chrome, on the other hand, is a great browser on every platform (including Linux!) and automatically updates itself (which means that you only need to get somebody to switch to Chrome once rather than repeatedly like with newer versions of IE).
Also, I'm not sure Firefox is actually behind Webkit-based browsers in features and certainly not significantly. I suspect Opera is pretty good as well although I don't use it.
I've worked at Facebook (internship). They use Chrome/Chromium extensively for development.
My guess is that this is just not a high-priority thing to change. One of Facebook's mantras is "Focus on Impact" (others: "Move Fast", "Be Bold" …). This is not high impact.
There's even proof that they collaborate quite nicely: less than two weeks ago, Facebook engineers went to talk to Chrome DevTools engineers. Goal: improve Chrome's timeline to improve Facebook's Timeline, and vice versa.
Source: https://plus.google.com/113127438179392830442/posts/Kgk78six....
Google and Facebook compete for advertising dollars. Chrome provides Google with user telemetry. The reasoning behind Facebook's selection of options is no different than the reason Google's search results pages lack "Like" buttons.
I'm sure facebook has done this on purpose, because they've gone an extra mile to include Opera (though an excellent browser, it has a quite low market share), but not Chrome.
For clarity - they should add logos of all supported browsers and versions too. I guess they don't support IE5.
On a side note: Netflix doesn't support Chrome on new video player. Yesterday I was watching movie on Chrome and I was dumbfounded when I was given notification that this is not supported browser.
My question is, why do they have this page at all in the first place?
If it doesn't work, it doesn't work. If there's a known-bad client, it seems reasonable to me to show a notification of that fact on the "front" page. (Not being a Facebook user, I don't know how they might set it up.)
Because after talks between Steve Jobs and Zuck (last year, presumably about Facebook integration in Mac OS), Apple decided to go with Twitter integration.
Almost more interesting than the omission of a browser from a vehemently self-declared rival is the omission of Flock & RockMelt, in my opinion. (They are, of course, browsers with “built-in social” & Facebook integration.)
Who the hell cares? Take a deep breath of chill the fuck out and don't read so much into things.
I doubt they spent much time debating which browsers to add here, or that this came out of a strategy meeting with Zuckerberg. I wouldn't be surprised if this was designed before Chrome was popular (perhaps with some styling fixes since then).
Even if they did exclude Chrome intentionally, they are entitled to promote whichever browsers they want to promote for whichever reasonable non-evil reasons they want.
You don't need to download Safari on the Mac and Safari on Windows is, well, not the best experience ever so I understand them not actively recommending it.
I'm going to assume you've never done anything so pathetic in your life as to leave a web page with something less than the latest, greatest, most open sourcey, freedom-loving information.
I'm not sure what attitude you are referring to. You may be reading a bit too much into this.
I was simply trying to draw some perspective - "really pathetic" is a bit of an overstatement for not linking to Chrome on a browser recommendation page, and we all make plenty of oversights each and every day, so shitting on others for them is bound to undermine your karma.
"Who the hell cares? Take a deep breath of chill the fuck out and don't read so much into things" is the attitude being referred to. It isn't exactly "Hi, you should consider this viewpoint..."
i have been using a variety of extensions (bitly, etc.) for awhile now and have never had an issue like this before. I can log into fb, but nothing shows up on the initial page.
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I wanted to check out what this link actually did, so I did a simple:
But the wget failed because of the lack of a supported user agent, and Facebook instead served me up this page.I really just had a little chuckle to myself, because, while this is extremely passive aggressive, it's not really hard to expect otherwise. I would do exactly the same if I were Facebook.
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I'm just suprised that they don't link to either webkit based browsers (Chrome/Safari). You can only assume that when one of your biggest threats is Google (and MS own 1.5%~) you probably aren't going to send more users to Google's way.
All in all, it just made me laugh, since if you are going to suggest a modern browser, you surely can't ever give props to Internet Explorer ahead of any webkit based browser? IE is still struggling to implement the most basic HTML5 features.