|I imagine that you're suggesting that this is something MSFT has done deliberately 
|so as to give users a push towards later operating systems.
| MrCurious
|
It's not unprecedented:
(from Friday) "Hotmail Doesn't Work With Linux Firefox 2.0"[1]
http://linux.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/02/08/1355246&threshold=5&mode=nested

|In general, that's plausible thinking,
|
Quite plausible:
http://www.google.com/search?q=define:browser+sniffing
...and they can sniff for ANYTHING (e.g. OS--which the example linked above shows).

|but in this case, I don't think so, because after all,
|it's the *browser* that's doing the rendering, not the OS (at least, not directly). 
|
"Versions" of pages can be delivered by the site,
depending on what its sniffing detects.

It is obvious that you don't understand enough
about the ways Internet Exploder is NOT standards-compliant
and about the hoops Web developers have to jump thru
to make pages render as desired on that broken-by-design family of browsers
...and *that* is AFTER these conscientious, hard-working folks
have constructed a page that 
*is* standards-compliant
and *does* render properly ON ALL OTHER BROWSERS.

THAT is the **ONLY** LEGITIMATE USE for browser sniffing
--but The Borg (and others) often use it[2] in punitive and surreptitious ways.

The usual way around this is to FAKE 
OUT THE OFFENDING SITE'S DETECTION SCRIPT:
http://www.google.com/search?q=change.*.user.agent.string+Firefox


[1] Hotmail is a M$ property.

[2] It's done incorrectly so often (e.g. SeaMonkey isn't recognized as Gecko)
that it's obvious that it is mainly used by clueless script monkeys
(I won't dignify them by calling them "Web developers")
...and all of this IS NOT NECESSARY for standards-compliant browsers;
the only thing that has to be sniffed for is M$'s NON-compliant (crap) apps.

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