http://www.smileygenerator.us/ is the leading clean smiley sites.It has made few thousand smileys so far.Smileygenerator has all of a sudden it has started blocking Opera and Firefox.
If you try accesing the site with Opera or Firefox you get a message saying :
We have determined that you are using some sort of ad-blocking software or using a leech enabled browser that downloads our site to your machine.
The webmaster (balamm) doesnt stop there.
The banned software currently includes Firefox and Opera browsers
As long as these “compliant browsers” and harvesters developers continue to promote theft and fraud,
or allow blocking banner ads or other advertising which allow me to pay for this site and earn a meager living,
I have no choice but to limit their access or close this site entirely.For those who complain, keep in mind that this site is designed using “Proprietary Creativity”.
I don’t care about opensource standards or w3c compliance and neither should the average web user! We’re here to have fun!
.
Being stunned on seeing this, I joined their forum to file a complaint and was greeted by the webmaster with the choiciest of words.The following are his grudges against firefox and opera.
Problem is, Firefox now prides itself on being Leech enabled. Even adverstises that it can strip an entire site, harvesting all links. It’s looking less like an opensource alternative and more like a way to bring an end to the free internet.
Banner blockers, ad stoppers, leech extensions, what next? Hacking and password cracking extensions?Oh, right…. It’s already has those doesn’t it.
Opera is just as bad but even worse for the crappy way it handles site layout and “drag and drop”. WTF is that crap?
When IE comes with blanket ad and banner blocking and integrated MS sponsored leech plugins, then I’ll block it too.Firefox and Opera browsers are both designed to either fake their identity or just not supply it. They are also designed to circumvent site features and block images, banners, text based ads, etc.
Not a very friendly or cooperative software from a webmaster’s point of view.
They are the reason more and more sites are being forced to switch to a subscriber system rather than provide free, ad sponsored content which users just take for granted.
Unfortunately, their designers took a good idea (blocking pop ups) and turned it into an anti webmaster, antisocial, anti “free internet” tool that blocks everything and hurts everyone.
It would be pretty clear to you that his complaints doesnt hold any ground al all.Both Opera and Firefox don’t support ad-blockers inherently.Opera Software has made is very clear that they wont include an adblocker in future either.Hoever there are addons available that can block ads.But, it is exactly the same with Internet Explorer.Actually there are more ad blockers available for IE compared to Firefox and Opera.
Now coming to faking user agents.Opera has been pretty much forced to do it.This is because of all those sites using browser sniffers to send broken code on detecting Opera.Not only that there are many old scripts that dont work if Opera’s ua is detected.Havard – an Opera employee had written a very nice article about this sometime back.You can read it here.And smileygenerator itself has become an example as to why such a feature is needed.If you dont want to edit the ua.ini file manually download this handy addon from myOpera forums.If you are using Firefox you can grab the useragent switcher extension from here.
And even after thinking a lot I just couldnt understand what he meant by a leech browser.
I guess this one beats environmentalchemistry episode by a mile(in case you are wondering what I am talking about please see this and this).I am angry with smileygenerator, but even more than that I am dissapointed to see such immature behaviour from them.Actually now if you want to use smileygenerator you would either have to use ua.ini or else fake your useragent using Proxomitron(whose principal task is to block ads and pop-ups).Not only that Maxthon is a webbrowser that comes with an adblocker included.But you can acces that site without the ads on Maxthon.Ironical.Isnt it?
Visit Smileygenerator
Visit their forums
Update 1 (5/11):It seems that smileygenerator.us is redirecting to a different german site called smileygenerator.com
Update 2 (11/11): Smileygenerator.us is no longer blocking Opera or Firefox.However the webmaster has made the following comment:
pallab.net noise
Pallab.net has been making a lot of noise lately. Seems he’s very desperate to have his site appear on the opera home page so he’s decided to challenge me. He doesn’t want you to know what he’s really about so I’ve asked a friend to ensure there’s an unedited version to keep him honest. When he restores the original, I’ll have this deleted. http://snipurl.com/nquq
It should be pretty obvious to any sensible person that his first accusition holds no ground.Neither am I challenging him.Smileygenerator is his website and he may do whatever he wants.However, this is my blog and I have the right to post my observations and comments on his website.And, in this article wasnt written to challenge him, but I merely pointed out the flaws in his argument for blocking Opera and Firefox.
I have no idea as to what he means by “He doesn’t want you to know what he’s really about”!I dont delete or edit comments posted only blog unless they are blatant comment spams,have abusive/racist comments.Sometimes I edit comments just to correct the formatting.He has put up a copy of this page here.If you scroll down you would notice that there is a comment there by the webmaster which isnt on my blog.It does make it seem like I deleted the comment.But the fact is that the comment was never posted on my blog.If I didn’t delete his earlier comments why would I delete that either?Feel free to draw your own conclusions.
He says:
“Guns don’t kill, people do!”Same with firefox and opera. It’s the people using it that give the software a bad name and a foul smell.
Does that mean that people using internet explorer don’t use adblockers?
The comment he makes in the last paragraph is really hillarious 
)
Your fanatacism is very usefull. I didn’t have to do much at all to make it into thousands of sites where other fanatics like yourself plot the overthrow of MSN or Microsoft, or IE.
And yet he calls me a fanatic
Oh, by the way palab,your CSS is NOT valid!
I know it very well.I never claimed to be an expereinced webmaster.I am an ameteur.But even an ameteur like me can tell that with the current design the click through rate at smileygenerator would be lowe than it deserves.Smileygenerator is one of the few sites still using almost extinct frames.But heck, this article wasnt supposed to be about webdesigning.
Balamm.Enough of these kind of posts.If you cant post in a decent manner then please dont.If you have any valid points to share then please go ahead.But otherwise there is no point in making posts like these.
From this point onwards any out of topic comments would be deleted.
As for as security issue is concerned check http://www.secunia.com and compare the security track record of Ie,Firefox and Opera.
Sorry, I prefer to believe only unbiased sites who have no agenda to promote one software over another. I doubt you have access to the level of information or reports I receive though so it’s not surprising that you’d refer people to that site.
So addressing the security issues with Opera and firefox is off topic?
I don’t see how.
You bitched about me playing opera and firefox users and said there was no reason for it. Well, here’s just one more reason not to use them and not to like them. At least not until they mature enough to admit they have major problems. Just as many as IE does if not more! Explain it away if you want. I’ll just go deeper into them and find more holes to exploit next week.
Me 1337? Nah, just not easily fooled by propaganda and hype.
Opera is more secure.I am sure you have heard of secunia.Check their site for confirmation.
And again this has no relation with my topic.You said that Opera and Firefox are leech browsers that promoted theft and fraud.That is what I wrote about.Not how good a browser Opera is.
no i think ur going offtopic , the whole topic was why balamm banned opera and firefox , which answer is very simple , he doesnt like it ,
but u people want to force ur crap browsers on others , opera maybe the worlds greatest browser , but if some one doesnt like , u cant do anything about it ,
CAN YOU ? :p
Well its one thing not liking a browser and banning it another.
If he dosent like these two browsers i.e. Opera & firefox the he should have straight away mentioned that “I dont Like these browsers & are banned on my site” instead of blaming Opera & Firefox being leacers & stuff.
Plus ricky if we agree with u that Opera & Firefox is Crap. then IE for sure is CRAPPIEST browser currently out there.
Can you tell me how am i forcing Opera on others?It was balamm try to force IE on others and on top of that giving extremely lame and stupid reasons which none of you have been able to defend.
from balamn
“”Opera is just as bad but even worse for the crappy way it handles site layout and “drag and drop”.”"
No wonder there – the html is all wrong, pages badly formated and organized. what would you expect ?!? Opera to have the exact same error recovery algorithms that ie ?!? if you respected w3c recomendations your site would look great in any browser. that’s what they’re for
we don’t need to defend anything. Your less than 6% market share says it all.
People just don’t like opera and with many valid reasons.
Mine is that it’s proponents consider themselves above the rest of us and tend to be non commerce supporting, and hell bent on proving they can ripp off legitimate online businesses by skirting browser checks, ads, and webmasters. Aided of course by the software itself.
You tell me it’s insecurity or unfair treatment that forces opera to identify itself as IE6.
I say it’s a matter of trying to gain access to places where you and your browser are not welcome. In my case because it looks like crap, handles pages like crap, has MAJOR safety and security issues, comes default with a faked UA, and isn’t popular enough to be considered a supported browser.
From what I’ve seen on your blog and on the opera site itself, The majority of opera supporters are just uneducated and possibly damaged people with very bad attitudes who pretend to know everything about everything but only really know what they read from others like yourself and a few so called mainstream “scrurity experts” websites.
I don’t how many times I can explain to you that a browser that provides the ability to send false information on a whim and displays things differently than it was intended sends a clear message to me that it’s purpose is not honourable.
It is certainly not the kind of software that ordinary honest web users would ever need!
And I would highly recommend that ordinary users stay far away from it as long as it opens old sites and pages or sessions by default.
That’s a nightmare just waiting to happen.
Actually moron, you have alot to defent.
Your site is so utterly worthless and poorly coded that some browsers have issues with it, and then you blame those browsers and call them crap and poorly coded?
“People just don’t like opera and with many valid reasons.”
People don’t like IE for many valid reasons:
1. Its insecure
2. Its insecure
3. Its still insecure
4. Five years from now, it will be even more insecure because MS can’t be arsed fixing it
5. It has poor support from standards that allow web developers to produce sites that work in all browsers
And when morons like you try to push it on people, what do you expect?
“I say it’s a matter of trying to gain access to places where you and your browser are not welcome.”
Not welcome? Because the author of a page is to stupid to go to http://www.w3.org and read up on standards?
“In my case because it looks like crap, handles pages like crap, has MAJOR safety and security issues, comes default with a faked UA, and isn’t popular enough to be considered a supported browser.”
You know, that sounds like your describing most of the flaws in IE.
Oh, IE isn’t a popular browser, everyone that knows anything about web development hates it, and the people that use it only use it because its the default on their system.
“From what I’ve seen on your blog and on the opera site itself, The majority of opera supporters are just uneducated and possibly damaged people with very bad attitudes who pretend to know everything about everything but only really know what they read from others like yourself and a few so called mainstream “scrurity experts” websites.”
Big words coming from someone who can’t even produce valid HTML. Fact is, these people are not pretending, they actually do know more than you.
“I don’t how many times I can explain to you that a browser that provides the ability to send false information on a whim and displays things differently than it was intended sends a clear message to me that it’s purpose is not honourable.”
Whereas, a developer who sends badly formed HTML is perfectly acceptable, and justified?
“It is certainly not the kind of software that ordinary honest web users would ever need!”
Actually, its this very software that helps save the web from morons like you, who think its OK to send invalid, poorly written HTML, just because they want to do their own thing.
“That’s a nightmare just waiting to happen.”
Sure, and your helping maintain that nightmare.
Face it balamn, everyone else here knows more than you do about these things, sure you might have been one of the big guys back in the day, but today your knowledge is lacking to the extent that everyone thinks your a moron, with no clue.
Well, perhaps thats exactly what you are?
Oh, I nearly forgot!
Since this whole thing started, your sites rank has gone down, and your not even on the first page in MSN Search for “smilie generator”…
All the people complaining about your stupidity are ranked above you.
90% of the people use IE from many years, i use IE but i dont get any viruses or spyware ,
the only people who need opera are the people who are very lazy to maintain thier pc , or are running buggy linux ,
if u had winxpsp2 with all the updates and IE ,u will have no security problems, so stop spreading lies ,:-/
the only thing Opera and FF is know for is spreading lies , cuz that is the only way they can be in bussiness,
trying to scare people and making them use Crap browsers ,
IE Rules the Web , and will Rule for the next Decade , :>>
Opera future will be like Netscape
I don’t how many times I can explain to you that a browser that provides the ability to send false information on a whim and displays things differently than it was intended sends a clear message to me that it’s purpose is not honourable.
You clearly show that you have no knowledge about Opera and it’s history.I have said it before and I would say it again.Opera is doing it as many webmasters (like you) block Opera purposely, while others unknowingly use scripts that sends bad code to Opera.
Do have a look at http://operawatch.blogspot.com/2005/11/yahoo-discriminating-against-opera.html
And session manager is the most wonderfull feature in Opera.And other browsers like Maxthon and Firefox(through extensions) have also embraced it.
Ie is prehistoric and Microsoft is always so slow to react.
First tabbed browser was released in 1994.
Ms added tabbed browsing in 2005.
If you check secunia you would notice that Ms hasnt even bothered to fix many security vulnerabilities.
Btw, Ie can’t even manage to display my blog properly.I admit that it isnt a valid CSS but Opera as well as Firefox manages to render it better than IE.
Idiots who use german spelling to search for a US site name or english product deserve to get no results
)
)
Don’t know as much as you thought you did eh?
I don’t give a flying f*ck what you think of my html. All you’re seeing is the end result of over 50 includes.
Not at all suprising then that there will be things out of order. At least it’s not a pasty gray out of the box cookie cutter CMS.
I don’t pretend to be w3c god compliant like you frauds do. It just doesn’t interest me at all that opera isn’t intuitive enough to display a simple overflow or scrolling div.
AS far as your site looking like sh*t in IE, you might try using a calculator next time you play with the padding.
Your session manager garbage kinda rules out the use of Opera in any internet cafe or public library. I hope!
And tabs? Yuck!
You know you all would make the Iraqi propaganda minister very proud.
“There are no bugs, no. there are not.. It is the best. You are completely safe. There is no need to worry, the infidels are all lying…”
Well, since palab and friends have turned this into non intelligent drivel and flames with no substance, while censoring the views and posts of others, there’s not much point in continuing this.
Think I’ll head over to sans and read the unbiased and uncensored security alerts on alternative browsers.
Secunia… lol! What an amateur.
Enough have been said.It is clear that you dont have any really valid explanation.
You call secunia an ameteur.That itself prooves something.
You perhapds dont even know that resuming last session can be disabled in Opera.
Anyway, I have had enough of your silly comments.
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