VK wrote:
Richard Cornford wrote:
This is a lie. The reason browsers spoof IE is because if the server
thinks they are IE it _probably_will_ serve them content they can
handle.
Like XSLT to Opera 8.x, right? ;-)
Most (even relatively unskilled) web developers would not use a UA
string test to determine whether to send XSLT to a client (indeed most
would do their XSLT on the server, and then the client's problem is
only HTML).
One fool may use a UA string test to server XSLT, while another may use
it to redirect to a page telling a user that they need another browser,
and another may decide a text only site is better than sending
HTML/CSS/javascript to a browser that could handle it if it got it. The
browser spoofing IE will only suffer if it encounters the first fool,
not the second two. Hence the browser that spoof _probably_will_ be
served content it can handle.
>And the reason Microsoft invented UA string spoofing was
because at the time pretending to be Netscape was the way of
getting servers to send content that IE could handle.
I do not recall "mozilla" in HTTP.USER_AGENT string would be ever
used for a particular UA detecting.
The contents of your mind have no baring on reality.
From NN2/IE2 that already was "isNN or
isIE or isSomeoneElse".
In some really old server-side scripts "mozilla" presence was
used to determine graphics enabled agents
This being the thing that you don't remember?
- thus able to render <img>'s and table layouts,
And if a server say 'this browser's UA is unrecognised so I will not be
sending images' but the browser can handle images it producers best
plan is to spoof the UA string of a browser that is recognised as
understanding images. And so it has been for every browser ever since.
not text stream only (that was a revolutionnary feature
not yet supported by everyone).
The deranged associations in your mind often migrate to the irrelevant.
This is why any graphics enabled agents adopted "mozilla"
at the beginning of the USER_AGENT
You don't think Microsoft put Mozilla 4 there because they had CSS
support and a scriptable object model?
string to pass the check successfully.
Please not that it was not a browser sniffing - that was exactly a
*feature check* based on the UA's string.
There is no such thing as a "feature check based on the UA string". UA
string testing is browser sniffing (or at least it was before UA
strings stopped being discriminating).
That is a well past history how, but as a remainder text-only
UA's like Lynx still never have "mozilla" in the USER_AGENT
string: unless manually changed or cluessly made.
That is not true. Making up your own fictional explanations for things
doesn't impress anyone. You don't have the experience of web browsers
to declare a general relationship between a UA string starting Mozilla
and a browser's support for images, and no such relationship exists in
reality.
>As the IE UA string is a lie itself (asserting as it does that the
browser is Netscape 4)
Why exactly Netscape 4? Maybe it wants to pretent to be a
Mozilla prototype or Netscape 1 ? ;-)
Netscape 4 introduced scriptable futures that IE 4 mirrored, it also
had acceptable CSS support, that IE 45 bettered.
>it is difficult to see fault in others telling
the same lie.
With "mozilla" legacy it is not a spoofing of a particular UA and it
never was IMHO.
Your opinions are, as always, worthless.
That's as I once said kind of the cross sign placed at the first line
of medieval manuscripts:
"Remembering the Greats who were before us... and now back to
business:..." :-)
You habit of talking rubbish is just one of the reasons you opinions
are worthless.
I see no correlation wih the situation when one currently existing
UA is actively pretending to be another currently existing UA by
applying mimicry not to USER_AGENT string only, but to the
entire host environment (while this host environment is far of
being equal to the spooffed one).
Your perceptions are as worthless as your opinions. The situations is
simply that expedience has lead to a situation where spoofing is
practiced, and the cause of that situation (inept web developers) has
not gone away so spoofing can be expected to carry on.
P.S. I really refuse to take a wannabe seriously
You don't have the skills necessary to have the choice of accommodating
them, so you are just trying to cover up that deficit with a dismissive
attitude.
"marked buttle" with a USER_AGENT string like "...MSIE...Internet
Explorer...like Gecko..." (no names, but these are real parts of a real
userAgent string). "Internet Explorer like Gecko" - sure, that's a hell
of serious competitor, I'll apply my best to support it. :-)
The User Agent string is not specified as a source of information so
treating it as such in inept. Once you recognise that you don't have to
care about User Agent strings and what they contain does not matter.
That fools like you do stupid things like attempting to derive meaning
form something that should never be treated as a source of information,
and cause browser manufacturers headaches in doing so, directly results
in these types of things appearing in UA strings.
Richard.