In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Gervase Markham
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > > > * "WinNT" for Windows NT 3.x, 4.0, W2K, Windows XP etc.
> > >
> > > I think there should be more of a distinction in this list
> >
> > Why?
>
> Because it's useful. There must be many reasons why you might want to
> present content based on the user's OS.
Can you give examples of legitimate use?
Examples of uses that I don't like:
* Checking whether the user comes from a platform a given piece of
software is available.
--Bad. Scenario: I use Mozilla on Solaris to learn about a Windows
program. I get redirected to a page saying that the program is not
available for my platform. Annoying. Why can't I read about it from
another platform?
* Serving different styles
--Bad. Mozilla has excellent platform parity.
* Limiting download options to those that run on the client platform.
--Bad. I might be using Mac OS X to download software for Mac Classic. I
might be using Mac OS X for downloading Windows software in order to
help a Windows user with a slow connection. I might be using IRIX for
downloading Solaris software because my home directory is shared between
IRIX and Solaris. And so forth and so on.
* Limiting access to plug-in content because a plug-in does not exist
for the client platform.
--Bad. How does the site author know whether a plug-in for a given
content type is available for some exotic platform that I use but the
author doesn't? I might be aware that a plug-in exists for Mac OS X,
Linux or Solaris even though the author thinks that nothing exists for
any platform other than Windows and Mac Classic.
--
Henri Sivonen
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.clinet.fi/~henris/
