So I guess due to some trademark violations Debian is now renaming firefox to iceweasel. If anyone is interested here is the site a came acrossed with the information. http://www.internetnews.com/dev-news...le.php/3634591

This is pretty old news already, but note that Thunderbird is now IceDove.

Yeah I just found that out also. I have not been using debian for a while so I thought it was new news.

And the Mozilla suite is Iceape.

Yeah, I've known this for almost a year now and this still bothers me on a daily basis. My desktop at home is Debian with XFCE, so I use CTRL+F2 to get the run dialog and I type ice and hit tab then enter to get icewesel running.. Then my notebook uses Xubuntu and I'm always doing ice tab enter and getting an error and have to put fir tab enter. I think the whole thing is retarded and a waste of time. I even had to go into my iceweasel's settings to make it identify as FF2.0 so that I can access some sites (bank for example) which do browser detection and block out unsupported/unknown browsers... Pain in the rear if you ask me.

I'd change banks. Obviously yours has no consideration for HTML standards, which means it is probably also not very secure.

See also:
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...d.php?t=558656

Same topic, but different slant

Being a web developer, I don't agree with you. Web security is not based on HTML standards, its based on the browsers security capabilities. Admit it, some browsers are safer than others. Would you logon to your bank account using Internet Explorer 5? Or how about some off-the-wall browser that you, nor anyone you know has ever heard of before? I dont think so. Only the latest, well known browsers are sure to contain the higher standards of security measures that some sites require (like a bank), so only the latest and most well known browser are going to be on the allowed list. This is for the customer's security. That's not to say there are some off-the-wall browsers or even older browsers that aren't capable, but the odds are against.

My original point was just that it frustrates me that I am using a FireFox browser that doesnt get recognized as a FireFox browser. In fact, on my own server, my firefox statistics dropped significantly and the "others" category has peaked (mostly because I am 50% of the traffic) for a few months before I changed its identity settings. A bank is not going to let a "other" browser login for security reasons, and frankly neither would I.

I've actually thought long and hard about ditching Iceweasel and installing Firefox manually, but the Debian in me keeps me on Iceweasel. I'll bitch and moan about it, but I'll accept it for what it is.

My bank lets me log in with Epiphany, or Iceweasel. They are constantly adding new layers of security, and Epiphany (unlike Fireweasel) does not store my password in clear text. My bank login goes through what appears to be a 3rd party application identifying itself as "enterprise2.openbank.com"

Quote from the blog of Debian Developer, Martin-Eric Racine:
My understanding of that statement is that the use of a browser "tag" to identify the worthiness of the browser being used is unnecessary and not a standard procedure. It's certainly none of my bank's business if I choose to use a "non-standard" browser, and enabling only IE or Firefox "for security reasons" has got to be some kind of joke.

User agent switcher extension for Firefox.. What is it two clicks and my browser can impersonate pretty much any other browser or even the google bot.. how is using that information as a security measure even worth while ? it's far to easy to change on the client side.

'Tis true, both of you, but you forget one thing. The client is the one wanting to be secure from hackers/sniffers/etc, so using a well known browser is the best way to go. Most people dont know that a browser can change its identity. Hell, most people dont know what a "browser" is. To them they just use "Internet Explorer" or "Firefox" or "Safari" or whatever their OS came with. These ignorant people are the ones being protected by using such security restrictions. Us geeks know enough to bypass any set of security systems placed in front of us, so something like this seems "silly" at best to us. I speak for the majority when I talk about security, not the all-knowing tech gods.