Re: Browser ID/User Agent

2017-08-01 Thread Rob Kendrick
On Tue, Aug 01, 2017 at 09:40:57PM +0100, John Williams wrote:
> 
> I've been doing some stuff recently with browser ID strings, and find that
> it is quite complicated!
> 
> There is stuff called Mozilla compatibility, platform, platform details,
> specific enhancements etcetera! All very difficult to untangle!
> 
> But NetSurf (RISC OS) resolutely reports itself as:
> 
> NetSurf/3.7 (RISC OS)
> 
> which isn't terribly helpful/compatible with the likes of, for instance:
> 
> Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; Android 6.0.1; SAMSUNG SM-T550 Build/MMB29M) 
> AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) SamsungBrowser/4.0 
> Chrome/44.0.2403.133 Safari/537.36
> 
> Observations, please!

http://git.netsurf-browser.org/netsurf.git/tree/Makefile.defaults#n79

All the accreted nonsense in the UA string you site from your phone is
because websites used UA sniffing to decide what to serve, and then web
browsers needed to lie in order to be compatible.  It was an endless
cycle.

B.



Re: Browser ID/User Agent

2017-08-01 Thread Daniel Silverstone
On Tue, Aug 01, 2017 at 21:40:57 +0100, John Williams wrote:
> 
> I've been doing some stuff recently with browser ID strings, and find that
> it is quite complicated!
> 
> There is stuff called Mozilla compatibility, platform, platform details,
> specific enhancements etcetera! All very difficult to untangle!
> 
> But NetSurf (RISC OS) resolutely reports itself as:
> 
> NetSurf/3.7 (RISC OS)
> 
> which isn't terribly helpful/compatible with the likes of, for instance:
> 
> Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; Android 6.0.1; SAMSUNG SM-T550 Build/MMB29M) 
> AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) SamsungBrowser/4.0 
> Chrome/44.0.2403.133 Safari/537.36
> 
> Observations, please!

NetSurf is not telling lies.  In addition, browser name sniffing is considered
harmful because of how many extensions exist which allow you to change it.
Basically just "no".

D.

-- 
Daniel Silverstone   http://www.netsurf-browser.org/
PGP mail accepted and encouraged.Key Id: 3CCE BABE 206C 3B69



Browser ID/User Agent

2017-08-01 Thread John Williams

I've been doing some stuff recently with browser ID strings, and find that
it is quite complicated!

There is stuff called Mozilla compatibility, platform, platform details,
specific enhancements etcetera! All very difficult to untangle!

But NetSurf (RISC OS) resolutely reports itself as:

NetSurf/3.7 (RISC OS)

which isn't terribly helpful/compatible with the likes of, for instance:

Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; Android 6.0.1; SAMSUNG SM-T550 Build/MMB29M) 
AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) SamsungBrowser/4.0 
Chrome/44.0.2403.133 Safari/537.36

Observations, please!

John

-- 
| John Williams 
| joh...@ukgateway.net

 Literary allusions are often magical - the art of the allusionist *