- From: <bugzilla@jessica.w3.org>
- Date: Tue, 03 Jan 2012 16:31:18 +0000
- To: public-html-bugzilla@w3.org
https://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=15380 --- Comment #9 from Philip J <philipj@opera.com> 2012-01-03 16:31:17 UTC --- (In reply to comment #8) > (In reply to comment #7) > > > > > The reason I ask is that if the string still contains something UA-specific, is > > > > there any reason to think that the de-facto requirements for what to include in > > > > will now keep expanding with the ebb and flow of browser market share? > [... snip ...] > > Actually, I was interested to hear everyone's opinions on this. Specifying part > > of the UA string is obviously better than specifying none of it, but is it too > > far-fetched to suggest that all of it be specified? There are downsides of > > course, but imagine to remove this source of incompatibilities forever! > > What did you mean by "still contains something UA-specific" above? I think it > could be quite ideal if there were rules for "all of it", that would not be far > fetched, at all. However, previoiusly I read you to suggest that all UA strings > should be one and the same - identical. I probably misread you then, sorry. I was suggesting, half seriously, that all browsers have the same User-Agent string. It seems the logical the way to put an end to server-side sniffing (and browser stats, oops). > [... snip ...] > > I wasn't at all involved, but my guess is that everyone knows that changing the > > UA string *at all* is guaranteed to cause compat issues somewhere, so it's not > > exactly a safe way to fix compat issues elsewhere. > > That sounds true. Nevertheless: Trident, Gecko and Webkit all updated their UA > strings this year. Are there important incompatibilities from that? Also, each > time the browser is released on a new hardware platform - or a new version of > the browser is released, the string updates too ... (Opera has, because of > this, stopped updating the first token of its string - which now just remains > Opera/9.80 ... guess it can't do that forever? Opera back then, at version 10, > asked what the other vendors would do - and perhaps they solved it by always > starting with the token Mozilla/\d ???) AFAIU, it's locked at 9.80 because of crummy script that took the first digit as the version number and assumed things based on that. The actual version is at the end of the string, e.g. Version/12.00. I guess when Opera reaches somewhere between 40 and 80 it could be changed back, but by then it's safe to assume that scripts will depend on Version/ instead :/ (Note that I'm not representing Opera here, I won't have anything to do with testing or implementing any changes to the UA string, I'm just speaking as someone with an interest in the topic.) -- Configure bugmail: https://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/userprefs.cgi?tab=email ------- You are receiving this mail because: ------- You are the QA contact for the bug.
Received on Tuesday, 3 January 2012 16:31:18 UTC