David E. Ross wrote:
On 10/29/2009 12:36 PM, Ken Rudolph wrote [in part]:
I previously wrote [also in part]:
On 10/29/2009 8:52 AM, Ken Rudolph wrote [in part]:
I seem to have solved this for the time being by adding
"Firefox/3.5.4" to the general.useragent.extra.seamonkey line in
about:config. Am I causing any potential permanent harm with this?
I really think you should indeed install an extension to do this and not
make the "Firefox" portion permanent. Good extensions will
automatically result in reverting back to your real UA string when you
terminate and then relaunch SeaMonkey. This is very important. You
want as many Web accesses as possible to show that they were from
SeaMonkey and not from Firefox. Otherwise, Web developers will have not
incentive to accommodate SeaMonkey. (The proper accommodation is to
sniff for "Gecko" and not for "Firefox". The best accommodation is to
create Web pages that don't require sniffing.)
I don't think it's my job to try to educate web developers. I'm a
pragmatist who just wants to be able to access my bill pay web site.
I wish web developers would sniff for "Gecko", of course...but I
can't see my paltry browsing having any affect on them.
Do you like SeaMonkey? Do you want development efforts to continue? If
Web server logs indicate no requests from SeaMonkey -- because users
permanently spoof for Firefox -- what is the incentive to continue
supporting SeaMonkey?
This is not an issue of educating developers. This is an issue of
protecting the SeaMonkey project. If someone complains that a Web page
cannot be viewed via SeaMonkey, I don't think it's a good idea to
provide data that allows the site owner to reply: "No one uses SeaMonkey."
With an appropriate extension (PrefBar is my choice but not the only
one), you can easily spoof Firefox when necessary but tell all others
that SeaMonkey is indeed in use without any mention of Firefox.
As far as financial institutions that refuse to sniff for "Gecko", I
have a separate SeaMonkey profile only for accessing those accounts.
There, I permanently spoof Firefox but with a UA string that says:
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.1.4)
Gecko/20091017 SeaMonkey/2.0 NOT Firefox/3.5.3
For this, I put
user_pref("general.useragent.extra.spoof", "NOT Firefox/3.5.3");
in the user.js file in that profile's directory. This ensures that
everything prior to the "NOT" is current and that I don't have to change
it. (I do change the user.js occasionally to update the Firefox
version.) If I have a dispute with a financial institution about
supporting SeaMonkey, this UA string allows me to tell them to examine
their server logs more carefully.
Is there a place to report such institutions that use browser sniffers.
They shouldn't. Or to get them to sniff on gecko instead of a particular
application?
--
Phillip M. Jones, C.E.T. "If it's Fixed, Don't Break it"
http://www.phillipmjones.net http://www.vpea.org
mailto:pjon...@kimbanet.com
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