Has anyone else noticed strange things with support.microsoft.com?
If I wget it (‘http://support.microsoft.com/’) from anywhere, I get an
index.html fine.
If I use lynx, I get gibberish (gzipped content, without a correct header)
If I use Firefox or IE behind some Squid proxies in certain places, it
doesn't understand the content either.
Looks like either they are not correctly encoding the content based on
browser capabilities.
It looks to me like they are doing file compression on the site.
(E.g., there seems to be an index.html.gz file there.)
This practice is described in "High Performance Web Sites" and other
fine publications. I
would be curious to know if this is a problem with Lynx or with their
site setup.
Regards
Marshall
Has anyone else noticed strange things with support.microsoft.com?
If I wget it ('http://support.microsoft.com/') from anywhere, I get an
index.html fine.If I use lynx, I get gibberish (gzipped content, without a correct
header)If I use Firefox or IE behind some Squid proxies in certain places, it
doesn't understand the content either.Looks like either they are not correctly encoding the content based on
browser capabilities.
hi colin ,
i checked the page , you seems right 
This page is not Valid (no Doctype found)!
40 errors
Marc
We had a problem this morning accessing it via a squid proxy, worked fine
direct but not via squid.
Fixed it with a
# Fix support.microsoft.com by removing Accept-Encoding header
acl support.microsoft.com dstdomain support.microsoft.com
header_access Accept-Encoding deny support.microsoft.com
Ben
Colin Alston wrote:
If I use Firefox or IE behind some Squid proxies in certain places, it
doesn't understand the content either.
IE in particular using HTTP 1.1 by default, but has HTTP 1.1 via proxy turned
off. It's a check box in the advanced tab. Also required when your proxy does
it's own compression to make dialup slightly more useable.
Jack
Looks more like a problem with Microsoft's site setup.
Lynx has no problems with html.gz my own testsite
http://www1.netzwerklabor.at/forum/ (you may use it for testing, but it
is *not* on a high performance server 
Regards,
Jutta
Colin Alston <karnaugh@karnaugh.za.net> writes:
Has anyone else noticed strange things with support.microsoft.com?
If I wget it ('http://support.microsoft.com/') from anywhere, I get an
index.html fine.If I use lynx, I get gibberish (gzipped content, without a correct header)
If I use Firefox or IE behind some Squid proxies in certain places, it
doesn't understand the content either.Looks like either they are not correctly encoding the content based on
browser capabilities.
Not only that. They are actually redirecting to a 404 not found page
based on User-Agent. Compare these two requests:
bjorn@canardo:~$ telnet support.microsoft.com 80
Trying 207.46.248.248...
Connected to support.microsoft.akadns.net.
Escape character is '^]'.
HEAD / HTTP/1.1
Host: support.microsoft.com
Connection: close
HTTP/1.1 302 Found
Connection: close
Server: Microsoft-IIS/6.0
P3P: CP="ALL IND DSP COR ADM CONo CUR CUSo IVAo IVDo PSA PSD TAI TELo OUR SAMo CNT COM INT NAV ONL PHY PRE PUR UNI"
X-Powered-By: ASP.NET
ETag:
X-AspNet-Version: 2.0.50727
Location: /default.aspx?scid=gp;[ln];gsserr404&style=error&errurl=%2fDefault.aspx
Set-Cookie: .ASPXANONYMOUS=JUEKFqPcyAEkAAAAZWU4OTVjZDktZTQyNi00ODNkLTkxMmMtMmZiNjhjZDg4NDYyIaA8To0Ty4xrBwpDO9AYeo974f81; expires=Thu, 03-Jul-2008 00:23:58 GMT; path=/; HttpOnly
Cache-Control: private
Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8
Content-Length: 196
Connection closed by foreign host.
bjorn@canardo:~$ telnet support.microsoft.com 80
Trying 207.46.248.248...
Connected to support.microsoft.akadns.net.
Escape character is '^]'.
HEAD / HTTP/1.1
Host: support.microsoft.com
Connection: close
User-Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 5.1; .NET CLR 1.1.4322; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 3.0.04506.30)
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Connection: close
Server: Microsoft-IIS/6.0
P3P: CP="ALL IND DSP COR ADM CONo CUR CUSo IVAo IVDo PSA PSD TAI TELo OUR SAMo CNT COM INT NAV ONL PHY PRE PUR UNI"
ETag:
X-Powered-By: ASP.NET
X-AspNet-Version: 2.0.50727
Cache-Control: public
Expires: Thu, 24 Apr 2008 14:45:06 GMT
Vary: *
Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8
Content-Length: 28183
Connection closed by foreign host.
The site is designed specifically NOT to work except if you've got an
approved browser. I guess they just don't want lynx users there...
Bjørn
Bjørn Mork wrote:
Not only that. They are actually redirecting to a 404 not found page
based on User-Agent. Compare these two requests:The site is designed specifically NOT to work except if you've got an
approved browser. I guess they just don't want lynx users there...
All the more reason to tell M$ to kiss off and move to other solutions. It's
only the beginning.....
Chris
Ben O'Hara wrote:
Fixed it with a
# Fix support.microsoft.com <http://support.microsoft.com> by removing
Accept-Encoding header
acl support.microsoft.com <http://support.microsoft.com> dstdomain
support.microsoft.com <http://support.microsoft.com>
header_access Accept-Encoding deny support.microsoft.com
Seems squid3 needs some slightly different hackdashery
acl support.microsoft.com dstdomain support.microsoft.com
reply_header_access Accept-Encoding deny support.microsoft.com
request_header_access Accept-Encoding deny support.microsoft.com