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Chrome phasing out support for User-Agent

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Re: Chrome phasing out support for User-Agent

#181

Post by klodolph »

ldng wrote: post #176
klodolph wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But, is it really such an improvement? Yes, unequivocally. It’s amazing, even without push. The websites that use it are faster, and the development process for making apps or sites that load quickly is much more sane. You don’t have to resort to the kind of weird trickery that pervades HTTP/1 apps. > Or is it just an improvement for Cloud provider that keep pushing the Kool-Aid ? I don’t see how that makes any sen…

>> Or is it just an improvement for Cloud provider that keep pushing the Kool-Aid ? > I don’t see how that makes any sense at all. Could you explain that? I've seen a few CDN having a page loading a grid of image in HTTP/1 at page load, and then load the same stuff with HTTP/2 on a button click. It indeed shows you a nice speed up. Except, when you block the first HTTP/1 load and start with loading with HTTP/2 first…

> Except, when you block the first HTTP/1 load and start with loading with HTTP/2 first and flush cache between loads, the speedup vanishes. The test is disingenuous, it is not testing HTTP/2 but DNS cache velocity.

The demos I’ve seen use different domain names for the HTTP/1 and HTTP/2 tests. This makes sense, because how else would you make one set of resources load with HTTP/1 and the other with HTTP/2? This deflates your DNS caching theory.

I didn’t rely on tests by CDNs, though. I measured my own website! Accept no substitute! The differences are most dramatic over poor network connections and increase with the number of assets. I had the “privilege” of using a high-RTT, high congestion (high packet loss) satellite connection earlier this year and difference is bigger.

What I like about it is that I feel like I have more freedom from CDNs and complicated tooling. Instead of using a complicated JS/CSS bundling pipeline, I can just use a bunch of //"@import/import". Instead of relying on a CDN for large assets like JS libraries or fonts, I can just host them on the same server, because it’s less hassle with HTTP/2. If anything, I feel like HTTP/2 makes it easier to make a self-sufficient site.

Finally, HTTP/2 is so dead-simple to set up on your own server, most of the time. It’s a simple config setting.

Re: Chrome phasing out support for User-Agent

#182

Post by babypuncher »

untog wrote: post #58
vxNsr wrote: post #44

> https://github.com/WICG/ua-client-hints I don't really understand how this will result in any real difference in privacy or homogeneity of the web. Realistically every browser that implements this is gonna offer up all the info the server asks for because asking the user each time is terrible UX. Additionally this will allow google to further segment out any browser that doesn't implement this because they'll ask f…

> I don't really understand how this will result in any real difference in privacy or homogeneity of the web. It does a little: sites don't passively receive this information all the time, instead they have to actively ask for it. And browsers can say no, much like they can with blocking third party cookies. In any case I'm not sure privacy is the ultimate goal here: it's intended to replace the awful user agent snif…

If it's well designed, then the system will only be able to query for feature support rather than ask what browser is in use.

I have a feeling Google won't do it that way, because they intentionally gimp most of their apps on non-Google browsers for no reason other than to be dicks.

Re: Chrome phasing out support for User-Agent

#183

Post by [deleted] »

jefftk wrote: post #165
klodolph wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But, is it really such an improvement? Yes, unequivocally. It’s amazing, even without push. The websites that use it are faster, and the development process for making apps or sites that load quickly is much more sane. You don’t have to resort to the kind of weird trickery that pervades HTTP/1 apps. > Or is it just an improvement for Cloud provider that keep pushing the Kool-Aid ? I don’t see how that makes any sen…

> My employer’s website uses every technique under the sun, including push and CDNs. Are you actually seeing good results from push? I have seen many projects try to use it, but am not aware of any that have ended up keeping it. (Disclosure: I work at Google)

[deleted]

Re: Chrome phasing out support for User-Agent

#184

Post by jgunsch »

ShamelessC wrote: post #129
currysausage wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Other browsers support DRM too, but with different tradeoffs.

Chrome uses Widevine, but one of Chrome's philosophies is that you should be able to wipe a Chrome install, reinstall Chrome, and have no trace that before/after are the same person. That means no leveraging machine-specific hardware details that would persist across installs. "Software-only DRM", essentially.

Edge on Windows (and Safari on OSX) are able to leverage more hardware-specific functionality --- which from a DRM perspective are considered "more secure", but the tradeoff is a reduction of end-user anonymity (i.e. if private keys baked into a hardware TPM are involved).

Last I checked, Chrome/Firefox were capped at 720p content, Safari/Edge at 1080p, though it looks like Edge is now able to stream 4k.

Re: Chrome phasing out support for User-Agent

#185

Post by Wowfunhappy »

colde wrote: post #145
ShamelessC wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Not the only browser to support DRM. But the only browser to support PlayReady on Windows, which brings added security compared to what Widevine offers on Windows. Another popular choice for high quality is Safari on macOS because it implements Apple's FairPlay.

Wait, Netflix et al use FairPlay in Safari on macOS?

I'm surprised, because Fairplay is publicly crackable.

Re: Chrome phasing out support for User-Agent

#186

Post by [deleted] »

jacobr1 wrote: post #60
eric_b wrote: post #42

This feels very ivory tower. It reminds me of the "You should never need to check user agent in JavaScript because you should just feature detect!!". Well in the real world that doesn't work every time. The same is true for server side applications of user-agent. There are plenty of non-privacy-invading reasons to need an accurate picture of what user agent is visiting. And a lot of those applications that need it ar…

Chrome will support the legacy apps by maintaining a static-user agent. It just won't be updated when chrome updates. If you want to build NEW functionality that where you need to test support for new browsers, you do that via feature detection.

[deleted]

Re: Chrome phasing out support for User-Agent

#187

Post by [deleted] »

jorams wrote: 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…

[deleted]

Re: Chrome phasing out support for User-Agent

#189

Post by Rebelgecko »

gowld wrote: post #169
leeoniya wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> browser feature detection is the way grown up developers have been doing this for several years now. and how do these grown up developers feature-detect when js is disabled? or are they too "grown up" to deal with anything but the ideal scenario? > I'd be surprised if that's how Amazon is doing it still. why don't you go there and open up your "grown up developer" devtools.

If your site doesn't use JS, you don't need features. Just use responsive HTML.

How do you handle browsers that render HTML differently?

Re: Chrome phasing out support for User-Agent

#190

Post by Lammy »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #185
colde wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not the only browser to support DRM. But the only browser to support PlayReady on Windows, which brings added security compared to what Widevine offers on Windows. Another popular choice for high quality is Safari on macOS because it implements Apple's FairPlay.

Wait, Netflix et al use FairPlay in Safari on macOS? I'm surprised, because Fairplay is publicly crackable.

So is WideVine.
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