User Agent settings

• From: <ptorr@vantsys.com.au>
• Date: Mon, 18 Jan 1999 13:52:37 +1000
• To: www-validator@w3.org
• Message-ID: <4A2566FD.0015C75F.00@melext.vantsys.com.au>

Hi,

I've looked at the archives for this list, and the "To Do" list for the
validator, and can't find this idea, so here it is:

Provide an option for the user to specify the HTTP_USER_AGENT string sent
to the server, either by typing it in explicitly, or selecting from a list
of common browsers (eg Mozilla, IE, etc.).

This option would be useful since some sites customise their content based
on the type of agent that the client is using. It might be the case that
the bare-bones HTML sent to the validator is correct, but the
all-bells-and-whistles HTML sent to Navigator or IE is not correct.

Personally, I have enabled two options, "setAgent" and "setVersion", that I
can pass to any page to pretend to be a different browser, and this is how
I validate the HTML output for all browsers.

Peter

P.S. The validator is a great service!

Received on Sunday, 17 January 1999 21:53:18 UTC