Here's a quick tip for the three people using Mozilla. I'm not sure if I mean Fe readers or the world in general, but anyway...

Lots of times you'll get to a page where it's complaining that you need an updated browser. For example, I recently came across one complaining I needed Netscape 6 or newer (or some shit like that). I'm running a fairly recent version of Mozilla, which is more Netscape than Netscape. Needless to say, this browser restriction fucking pissed me off, since I A) need to access that site and B) my browser is a good enough version for these stupid fuckers, they're just to stupid to realize that.

Well, you can modify what Mozilla (as well as what Firebird) tells websites that it is. Not only can you can make sites think you're using a different Mozilla/Nutscrape version, but you can also make sites think Mozilla is any other browser, including IE.

To do this, you can type "about:config" in the address bar (no quotes, of course). This is a decent interface for customizing all sorts of Mozilla shit. It's nice that Mozilla is so customizable, by the way, but it is the biggest fucking pain in the ass to do in many circumstances. This procedure, however, is pretty painless, and the "about:config" interface helps in that regard. The config interface actually just edits your prefs.js file for you, in case you're averse to hand-editing shit (which, normally, I am not, but Moz is a special case).

Anyway, go to "about:config," right click anywhere down in that mess of a list, and choose new->string from the pop-up menu. For the string name, call it "general.useragent.override" (once again, no quotes, which I know you know, so leave me alone). For the string value, you can enter anything in this list.

Although this ended up fixing my problem with the site in question, it caused side issues. For example, I changed the useragent string to "Netscape/7.0 (X11; Linux)," and Blogger stopped giving me the nice posting interface. As such, I had to go edit my profile and tell it to ALWAYS use the classic interface since I know my browser can handle it. Also, I tried spoofing as IE at one point, but the classic interface gave me this stupid help bar on the right which I couldn't get rid of. I'm pretty sure I know how to use Blogger at this point, what with me being past 1,300 posts.

I don't know if Moz needs to be restarted, but my old-school Mac mentality had me doing it anyway just in case. Either way, it worked like a charm. Oh, and you can of course go back to the default useragent string by just removing the override.

As mentioned, this may cause some problems with other sites, and you had better be using it for good instead of evil. As if I give a shit. The one thing I give a shit about is if you blame me for any problems, because I will have none of that. Even if it does cause problems with other sites, this is a handy, un-doable fix that can be used for sites that are being douchebags.