- From: David E. Ross <david@rossde.com>
- Date: Fri, 23 Nov 2007 11:34:20 -0800
- To: www-style@w3.org
(This might be somewhat -- but not entirely -- redundant with my 18 Nov 2007 comments.) Browsers (other than perhaps Internet Explorer (IE)) have implemented the ability to spoof other browsers. For Opera, a user-oriented spoofing capability is inherent in the "vanilla" browser. For Gecko-based browsers, there are a number of user-oriented add-on extensions. These capabilities compensate for existing flaws in how sniffing for browsers is implemented in Web sites. So far, the Mozilla organization has accumulated a list of more than 70 reports of Web sites that do flawed sniffing, where Firefox works okay but other Gecko browsers (e.g., SeaMonkey, Camino) do not work. This is because the sniffing is for "Firefox" and not for "Gecko". It appears that some of this sniffing is specifically for "Firefox 2", which will break when Firefox 3.0 is released next year. As new browser versions are released, version sniffing requires ongoing costs for maintaining Web sites without delivering any benefits to either site owners or visitors. Those who think flawed sniffing is a problem caused primarily by unqualified Web developers, need to think again. Among the sites with flawed sniffing are Microsoft's Hotmail, Google, Comcast's ISP service, and Ebay. I don't think this proposal will eliminate flawed sniffing. It might even make flawed sniffing easier. And the proposal that Web developers always include a @ua for "everything else" cannot be enforced. There is not even a way to enforce HTML and CSS validation of every Web page. Therefore, I don't see the developers of other browsers preventing users from spoofing IE or any other browser through @ua (or any of the alternatives suggested here). Prohibiting spoofing would drive away potential users. Thus, spoofing will remain a factor, which will easily defeat the purpose of this proposal. I must side with the others who believe that use of cross-platform, cross-browser HTML and CSS is the proper way to develop Web sites. This proposal would instead facilitate platform-specific, browser-specific Web sites. David E. Ross <http://www.rossde.com/>. Don't ask "Why is there road rage?" Instead, ask "Why NOT Road Rage?" or "Why Is There No Such Thing as Fast Enough?" <http://www.rossde.com/roadrage.html>
Received on Friday, 23 November 2007 19:46:20 UTC