Browser upgrade banner on Google Gmail Basic HTML View

[Andrew T.]

Today, this banner started to pop up when accessing Gmail's Basic HTML view on any browser capable of running on Windows 9x (and even some that aren't, like Firefox 3.6):

Google has been using banners like these to push Chrome and other untenable browser upgrades for AJAXy services for some time...but its appearance here is absolutely ridiculous. The Basic HTML view is perfectly viewable in any browser, and had been what users were referred to when they WEREN'T using a browser on Google's list of modern "upgrades." Moreover, there's no link anywhere on the page to make the banner go away.

Fortunately, this obnoxious scrawl is simple to banish with a CSS override file containing just this:

#bm {display: none;}

This can be done with an extension such as Stylish on Firefox, or natively on Opera (Edit Site Preferences > Display > My Style Sheet).

[dencorso]

Good to see you again, Andrew T.!

[Andrew T.]

Yes, I'm back. B)

After a bit of digging, it turns out the breadth of this prompt is actually narrower than I thought. Google is apparently doing useragent sniffing only for Firefox 3.x, which primarily impacts post-9x (and KernelEx) users. I had selectively spoofed my useragent on Google as Firefox so that I wouldn't be redirected to their redesigned photo search, so it showed up on Opera as well.

No such message appears on Firefox 2.x, which is the last 9x-compatible version by default. (Does Google implicitly want people to downgrade from Firefox 3.6 to 2.0?)

[Dude111]

Ya i was gonna say bud,Im using IE6 (MyIE2 in front) and i dont get any such message...... (I use the basic HTML interface (Much faster))

http://mail.google.com?ui=html

I dont use my gmail account though...

Edited August 30, 2013 by Dude111