Re: [XHR] Setting the User-Agent header

On Wed, Sep 5, 2012 at 12:03 PM, Mark Nottingham <mnot@mnot.net> wrote:

> The current draft of XHR2 doesn't allow clients to set the UA header.
>

Presumably, by "clients" you mean client-side script, and not "the [client]
implementation of the UA".


>
> That's unfortunate, because part of the intent of the UA header is to
> identify the software making the request, for debugging / tracing purposes.
>

Since client-side script, whether in a library referenced by a page or
directly from the page, is not part of the UA, then it should not be able
to modify the UA string.


> Given that lots of libraries generate XHR requests, it would be natural
> for them to identify themselves in UA, by appending a token to the
> browser's UA (the header is a list of product tokens).  As it is, they have
> to use a separate header.
>

And, IMO, should stay that way (use a separate header).