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Chrome phasing out support for User-Agent

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Re: Chrome phasing out support for User-Agent

#121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It actually insert a line break on enter, make it invisible and can't be deleted only on firefox. Pretend firefox as chrome makes it works perfectly. They lock the community thread and fixed that after several days I found the finding and post it there. Shame on you, google.

Oh my god. I knew it was inserting a line break when I hit enter but I didn't realize it was a FF only issue. gdi Google.

really working hard to shove that poison apple down your throat.

Re: Chrome phasing out support for User-Agent

#122
post #36

The weird thing about this is that the only company I've seen doing problematic user-agent handling in recent years is Google themselves. They have released several products as Chrome-only, which then turned out to work fine in every other browser if they just pretended to be Chrome through the user agent. Same with their search pages, which on mobile were very bad in every non-Chrome browser purely based on user age…

Every single Google product is slower on Firefox and it’s hard to not call this malice and artificial. Many people check out Gmail and GMaps on Firefox and go back to Chrome because of their clunkiness on Firefox.

> malice and artificial

are you actually asserting that Google is purposefully adding code/"tweaking" their web apps to run slowly on browsers other than Chrome?

do you have any evidence at all for this other than anecdotes about people experiencing Google web app clunkiness on Firefox?

Re: Chrome phasing out support for User-Agent

#124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It actually insert a line break on enter, make it invisible and can't be deleted only on firefox. Pretend firefox as chrome makes it works perfectly. They lock the community thread and fixed that after several days I found the finding and post it there. Shame on you, google.

Oh my god. I knew it was inserting a line break when I hit enter but I didn't realize it was a FF only issue. gdi Google.

Same... I've been played.

Re: Chrome phasing out support for User-Agent

#125

User-agent is super useful to human people. But corporate people don't have a use for it. They will get that information via running arbitrary code on your insecure browser anyway. So, because mega-corps now define the web (instead of the w3c) this is life. But it doesn't have to be. We don't have to follow Google/Apple-Web standards. Anyone that makes and runs websites has a choice. And every person can simply choic…

Unfortunately they are either unethical or have other problems (or most commonly, both); I have made suggestions how to make a better one. See other comment elsewhere they explain

Re: Chrome phasing out support for User-Agent

#127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It actually insert a line break on enter, make it invisible and can't be deleted only on firefox. Pretend firefox as chrome makes it works perfectly. They lock the community thread and fixed that after several days I found the finding and post it there. Shame on you, google.

Oh my god. I knew it was inserting a line break when I hit enter but I didn't realize it was a FF only issue. gdi Google.

Not the first time. For some reason Google really doesn't like people talking about the games they play with browser detection.

(That's not snark - I really don't get it. They don't appear to mind people talking negatively about a lot of other stuff they get up to. Maybe lingering antitrust fears from the 90's MS suit?)

Re: Chrome phasing out support for User-Agent

#128
post #51
post #36

The weird thing about this is that the only company I've seen doing problematic user-agent handling in recent years is Google themselves. They have released several products as Chrome-only, which then turned out to work fine in every other browser if they just pretended to be Chrome through the user agent. Same with their search pages, which on mobile were very bad in every non-Chrome browser purely based on user age…

I had been thinking recently as I've been using Firefox more that Google maps had got clunky. With a little fiddling prompted by your comment, it turns out Maps sniffs specifically to reduce fluid animations on Firefox (and probably some other browsers).

What versions of Firefox and Chrome are you seeing different behavior in Google Maps? I get the same experience in Chrome 80 and Firefox 74 on OSX Catalina.

Re: Chrome phasing out support for User-Agent

#129
post #36

The weird thing about this is that the only company I've seen doing problematic user-agent handling in recent years is Google themselves. They have released several products as Chrome-only, which then turned out to work fine in every other browser if they just pretended to be Chrome through the user agent. Same with their search pages, which on mobile were very bad in every non-Chrome browser purely based on user age…

If you have the new Chromium-based Edge ("Edgium") installed: the compatibility list at edge://compat/useragent is really interesting. Edgium pretends to be Chrome towards Gmail, Google Play, YouTube, and lots of non-Google services; on the other hand, it pretends to be Classic Edge towards many streaming services (HBO Now, DAZN, etc.) because it supports PlayReady DRM, which Chrome doesn't. [Edit] Here is the full l…

This is off topic but do you know why Edge is the only browser to support DRM for streaming? Or is that incorrect?

I see lots of people who have to use edge on order to get 4k content from Netflix; presumably because of the DRM issues.

Re: Chrome phasing out support for User-Agent

#130

This is a good idea, and is something I've thought of for a while; the user agent header was a mistake from both a privacy and a UX perspective. Ideally, web browsers should attempt to treat the content the same no matter what device you are on. There shouldn't be an iOS-web, and a Chrome-web, and a Firefox-web, and an Edge-web; there should just be the web. In which case, a user-agent string that contains the browse…

That just makes things harder for those who wants this information. Still you can fingerprint browser by features and API support, but it requires javascript now and up to date library with recent features support check. I mean that it doesn't prevent obtaining this information, it's still available for big players who has big data
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