I’m not a Windows user, so I’m not an Internet Explorer user. I have a Hotmail account just so I can chat with friends who only use MSN Messenger. Some of these friends feel the need to send email to my Hotmail account rather than my Gmail account so I do log in to check it now and again. Of course, I’m using Firefox on Linux, so things should work just fine, right? Not entirely.

So, I go to hotmail.com, enter my user name and password, and this is what I see:

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What the heck is this?! I thought I was using Firefox. Let’s double check. Clicking Help -> About shows the following:

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Is this Microsofts way of trying to tell people that Firefox is somehow a sub-standard browser?

Let’s find out the truth. Visit https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/59 and install a copy of User Agent Switcher. Restart Firefox when prompted.

User Agent Switcher didn’t add an icon to my Navigation Toolbar so these are the steps I took to add it myself.

Click View -> Toolbars -> Customize.

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Now scroll down until you find the User Agent button.

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Then drag the User Agent button onto your Navigation Toolbar.

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Ok, so let’s see if we can trick Hotmail into working properly. Click the User Agent button and choose Opera.

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Now browse to hotmail.com and try logging in.

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What do you know? It works flawlessly, this time with no warning about needing to upgrade my browser.

I do find it humourous that Opera is not actually on the list of supported browsers and choosing Internet Explorer as the user agent failed miserably.

Of course, when you log out of Hotmail, don’t forget to set your User Agent back to the default.

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