Google blocks Windows Phone from Maps, limits Gmail
Linked by Thom Holwerda on Sat 5th Jan 2013 14:53 UTC
Talk, Rumors, X Versus Y And so this situation is starting to get ridiculous - and consumers are, as usual, caught in the middle of it all. Google has just blocked Windows Phone devices from accessing Google Maps on their phones. In addition, it also seems Windows Phone users are now restricted to the basic HTML version of the mobile GMail website. While understandable from a defensive perspective - Microsoft's extortion scheme targeting Android device makers and all that - it's still a massive dick move that only hurts consumers. Update: the media attention has worked - Google is backpedalling, and will remove the redirect. "We periodically test Google Maps compatibility with mobile browsers to make sure we deliver the best experience for those users. In our last test, IE mobile still did not offer a good maps experience with no ability to pan or zoom and perform basic map functionality. As a result, we chose to continue to redirect IE mobile users to Google.com where they could at least make local searches. The Firefox mobile browser did offer a somewhat better user experience and that’s why there is no redirect for those users. Recent improvements to IE mobile and Google Maps now deliver a better experience and we are currently working to remove the redirect. We will continue to test Google Maps compatibility with other mobile browsers to ensure the best possible experience for users."
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Brendan
Member since:
2005-11-16

Hi,

I think the "user agent" string should be banned, and replaced with something to indicate which standard/s the client supports.

This way you get the best of both worlds:

- Web developers don't need to prototype with many browsers
- Web developers don't need to care about broken implementations
- Web developers can easily support older or newer standards (e.g. if browser says it only supports HTML 3, then don't give it HTML 5)
- Browser developers that keep screwing things up end up having a reason to fix their broken puss

The bigger issue imo is that these things need to happen faster. It shouldn't take years for a group of people to agree on things. It reminds me of the US Congress.


There's a completely separate issue (most of the stuff designed by W3C takes an excessively large amount of work for browser developers to support correctly, because most of it is a "designed by committee" ugly and overcomplicated pile of puke that tries to be bad for many things instead of being good for one thing), but this doesn't change the basic idea that if you're adopting a standard you should adopt that standard correctly.

- Brendan

Reply Parent Score: 4

lucas_maximus Member since:
2009-08-18

We have most of these features provided by JS libraries like Modernizr.

TBH I don't bother supporting anything lower than IE7 these days.

Edited 2013-01-06 12:11 UTC

Reply Parent Score: 2

Lennie Member since:
2007-09-22

Those exist:

http://www.javascriptjedi.com/browser_js_features.htm

Not that they are particularly useful to most webdevelopers, most of the time, but they do exist.

Reply Parent Score: 2