Re: remove/deprecate User-Agent header?

On 19.08.2010 13:31, Paul Wise wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I found out about httpbis and the first thing I thought of was my hatred
> of the User-Agent header. Would it be possible to make it illegal in
> HTTP/1.2 so that there are less stupid websites? To see just how much

Clarifying: we aren't defining HTTP/1.2.

> FAIL User-Agent has created, check out some of these strings:
>
> http://www.zytrax.com/tech/web/browser_ids.htm#chrome
> http://www.zytrax.com/tech/web/browser_ids.htm#epiphany
> http://www.zytrax.com/tech/web/browser_ids.htm#gnuzilla
> http://www.zytrax.com/tech/web/browser_ids.htm#galeon
> http://www.zytrax.com/tech/web/browser_ids.htm#mozilla
>
> Examples of stupid websites:
>
> https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=592665
> http://blog.kov.eti.br/?p=119
> http://glandium.org/blog/?p=145
> http://home.kairo.at/blog/2007-06/the_fight_for_the_suckiest_ua_string
> https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=385999
> https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=384721
> http://svn.gnome.org/viewvc/epiphany/branches/gnome-2-18/data/weasel-ua-pref.js.in?view=markup&pathrev=7101

I agree that many uses of U-A are bad. That doesn't mean there aren't 
good ones.

Independently of that, what *effect* do you think making it "illegal" has?

Best regards, Julian

Received on Thursday, 19 August 2010 12:39:42 UTC