Bug 8278 – SVG not detected on Urchin web statistics website

• Component: Evangelism
• Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

[Torsten Trautwein]

My Webhoster MacDock uses Urchin for my website statistics.
When trying to use svg graphics, Urchin pops up a message which states that my Browser doesn't have SVG support implemented. Maybe the detection doesn't work correctly, but I couldn't find a way to skip the detection and see if it works anyway.

[Eric Seidel (no email)]

Could you provide a link?  I'm not sure how they do their detection.  It maybe based on hasFeature, or possibly looking for some SVG JS extension.

[Alexey Proskuryakov]

According to Google, only Adobe SVG Viewer is supported in Urchin: <http://www.google.com/support/urchin45/bin/answer.py?answer=40959&topic=7384>. Indeed, it doesn't work in Firefox either.

I have found an example installation here: <http://69.94.67.101:9999>. Apparently, Urchin uses a script from Adobe, <http://69.94.67.101:9999/ujs/svgcheck.js>.

function isSVGPluginInstalled() {
   return (navigator.mimeTypes["image/svg"]&&navigator.mimeTypes["image/svg"].enabledPlugin!=null)||
          (navigator.mimeTypes["image/svg+xml"]&&navigator.mimeTypes["image/svg+xml"].enabledPlugin!=null)||
          (navigator.mimeTypes["image/svg-xml"]&&navigator.mimeTypes["image/svg-xml"].enabledPlugin!=null);
}

Looks like we can easily fool this check by adding SVG to the browser.mimeTypes list (and that may even be the "right" thing to do).

[Alexey Proskuryakov]

Created attachment 9727 [details]
proposed fix

Add a "hidden" SVG plugin.

Not sure if the plugin and MIME type descriptions need to be localizable here - probably not.

[Darin Adler]

Comment on attachment 9727 [details]
proposed fix

Is this really the right thing to do? Does Firefox do something like this?

[Eric Seidel (no email)]

Comment on attachment 9727 [details]
proposed fix

Ick.  I don't think we want this. At least not the "fake plugin" part.  Unless we want this to be some sort of trip-wire for an Adobe Plugin compatibility mode (adding non-standard things like adobe getters and setters and image/svg-xml support, etc.)

The much better solution IMO is simply to inform google about the problem.  Should be a very simple change on their end.

[Alexey Proskuryakov]

(In reply to comment #4)
> Does Firefox do something like this?

No, but Urchin SVG doesn't work in Firefox either.

(In reply to comment #5)
> The much better solution IMO is simply to inform google about the problem. 
> Should be a very simple change on their end.

If it were only Google, that would be out of question, but there are probably other sites using the same detection script?

[David Kilzer (:ddkilzer)]

(In reply to comment #5)
> (From update of attachment 9727 [details] [edit])
> Ick.  I don't think we want this. At least not the "fake plugin" part.  Unless
> we want this to be some sort of trip-wire for an Adobe Plugin compatibility
> mode (adding non-standard things like adobe getters and setters and
> image/svg-xml support, etc.)

I don't think this is so bad.  Only "image/svg+xml" support was added by this patch.  The reference to "image/svg-xml" was only in the test to mimic what the actual JavaScript did.  How is this different from adding undetectable document.all support?

It wouldn't be impossible to pull all the WebKit SVG code into a plug-in, would it?  (That way, if Leopard Safari shipped without SVG support, it could be added in later--instead of using the WebKit dynamic linking trick.)

> The much better solution IMO is simply to inform google about the problem. 
> Should be a very simple change on their end.

Added the GoogleBug keyword for this issue, although as Alexey states in Comment #6, this would only fix Google's site.

[Eric Seidel (no email)]

We could add this as a debug option (under the Debug menu), but really I think we should just close.

[David Kilzer (:ddkilzer)]

Actually, I think this should be an evangelism bug.  Urchin may not get fixed (as quickly) if we don't evangelize SVG on WebKit!  (If you disagree, just close this bug again.)

[Eric Seidel (no email)]

Yeah, I agree, this is a pretty simple evangelism bug.  Especially given Google's support of FireFox, they should just make Urchin/GoogleAnalytics SVG aware.

[David Kilzer (:ddkilzer)]

<rdar://problem/5721948>

[David Kilzer (:ddkilzer)]

Eric, now that you work at Google, do they have any plans to make Urchin 5 work with Chrome and Safari using their native SVG support?

Or should this bug be closed as Not To Be Fixed?

I see Urchin 6 is now an offline application for Windows, Linux and FreeBSD.

<http://www.google.com/urchin/download.html>

[David Kilzer (:ddkilzer)]

(In reply to comment #12)
> I see Urchin 6 is now an offline application for Windows, Linux and FreeBSD.
> 
> <http://www.google.com/urchin/download.html>

And by "offline application" I mean a native OS application.