In the latest feud between Microsoft and Opera, it seems that Microsoft is now targeting Opera users on its MSN Personals site, by distorting the page content.
This only occurs when the Opera browser identifies itself as Opera, however, when identifying as Internet Explorer, it works fine, of course. (To change the identity (User Agent) of the browser, press {F12} and click on “Identify as …”.) It works fine in Mozilla and firefox.
MSN, apparently, looks for the word “Opera” in the User-Agent and purposely sends it a style sheet which distorts the pages.
The conflict between Opera and MSN dates back to 2001, when Microsoft rewrote MSN in such a way that Opera could not access the site.
Opera responded with a tweak on its Opera 7 browser that turns Microsoft’s MSN Web site into gibberish that was inspired by the Swedish Chef from “The Muppet Show” (Screenshot).
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You are over reacting my friend. If you take a closer look at the site, you will see that it is hosted by Match.com. If you go to their main webpage, and try to search for something, same problem occurs in Opera but not when Opera pretends to be IE. Considering the $12 million they paid to Opera for the previous problem, they probably would not do it again.
What happens with a completely unknown user agent like “serengeti” or “oprah”?
Want a “non-overreacting” example? Try this one:
http://ninemsn.com.au/
If you yakov, had looked a little deeper, you would have noticed that the site is run by microsoft. Check the legal section if you dont believe me.