Shaw Webmail Mobile Interface in Firefox

[VictoriaBruce]

For years I've been accessing Webmail through Firefox on my mobile phone (Android in the past and now iPhone 12 mini) and it has worked well: 

https://webmail.shaw.ca

It's a mobile-friendly version which is different from the desktop interface - fewer emails visible, larger buttons, etc. In early August it changed so that the desktop version loads - many rows of emails and tiny text -  really hard to use on a small screen mobile.

I just checked and the mobile version still seems to load from Safari on the iPhone.

Any idea what changed ?

I've had the same @shaw.ca email address for a long time and that's what keeps me with Shaw (and now Rogers). If it stops working I could be switching providers. I don't want to use a mail client on the phone because I don't want to store all my emails there. The Webmail client doesn't take up space - it's just a Web page.

[rstra]

@VictoriaBruce  If you configure an email client to use IMAP, the emails will be stored on the server. 


https://support.shaw.ca/t5/internet-articles/about-pop-and-imap-email-server-settings/ta-p/6731#cont...

[mdk]

@VictoriaBruce -- the mobile version still seems to load from Safari on the iPhone. Any idea what changed ?

What happens if you install Microsoft Edge on your iPhone? Do you get the mobile or the desktop version?

Did Firefox update, causing it to send different information to the Shaw mail-server, causing the mail-server to return differently-formatted content?

[VictoriaBruce]

Hi mdk,

Good thought - I installed Microsoft Edge and it loads the mobile formatted page correctly. So it looks like a problem in the interaction with Firefox. I'm no longer a programmer so don't know how to capture the exchange between my Firefox and the webmail server - especially on an iPhone.

[mdk]

@VictoriaBruce -- for packet-tracing in Microsoft Windows, see:

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/iis-support-blog/capture-a-network-trace-without-installing-a...

For Apple's IOS, I do not know.

Maybe, if you have a high-end router between your Apple computer and the Internet, it might have the capability to record packets ???

Or, maybe, another computer with a network-adapter in "promiscuous" mode, and with suitable software, it will "sniff" the traffic on your LAN ???

[VictoriaBruce]

I just fired up my old Samsung Mini 4 with Firefox v68 (2020) and webmail.shaw.ca loads to the mobile version. Something must have changed recently in Firefox. I might report it on a Firefox support community. For now, I'm happy to use Safari on the iPhone for this.