isn't it concerning that Google decides to follow and implement even though the conversation on github concluded by "it should be rejected by W3C"?
Chrome phasing out support for User-Agent
321–329 of 329 posts
Re: Chrome phasing out support for User-Agent
#322Can't happen soon enough. As a frequent user of various non-mainstream browsers i'm sick and tired of seeing "your browser isn't supported" messages with download links to chrome/etc. At least in the case of Falkon it has a built in user agent manager, and I can't remember the last time flipping the UA to firefox/whatever actually caused any problems. Although, i've also gotten annoyed at the sanctimoniousness web si…
if your browser isn't supported, it's not the browser's fault, rather the website you go on not to support your browser.
Re: Chrome phasing out support for User-Agent
#323More specifically, Google thinks they're the central authority as to what Chrome will do.
Re: Chrome phasing out support for User-Agent
#324Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 t…
So any user on Edge can be hardware fingerprinted easily? I can see why other browsers stay far away.
That's a good question. Is there anything to stop a disreputable advertiser/tracker hijacking the EME DRM scheme for tracking?
The evercookie project doesn't appear to leverage EME, for what that's worth. https://samy.pl/evercookie/
Re: Chrome phasing out support for User-Agent
#325Earlier quoted context omitted.
I know Netflix used to block the Firefox on Linux user agent for no reason
Not for a technical reason, but they had a reason: they provided no support or guarantee that Netflix would ever work on Linux + FF (Ubuntu + Chrome was guaranteed) and they didn't want any support calls for something that they wouldn't help people with anyway. A lot of stuff gets blocked for this reason. The company doesn't want you calling them because HD video doesn't work on Firefox even though you pay for HD qua…
Why not a banner saying that it's not supported and may have issues? You might lose customers if you simply block them from using it at all.
Re: Chrome phasing out support for User-Agent
#326Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm sure Google won't build in some proprietary way for them to identify Chrome. /s
I mean they already did. The goal is to replace user agent parsing with a simple field that says exactly what browser and version this is.
You mean like a user-agent string?
Gee, I wonder how this is going to end: https://webaim.org/blog/user-agent-string-history/
Re: Chrome phasing out support for User-Agent
#327Earlier quoted context omitted.
Or... quit using buggy app?
Except, that has been pointed out in the parent comments, it's not the application, it's a deliberate bug targeted towards a different browser(hence changing the user agent fixes it).
The browser is not the app I had in mind.
Re: Chrome phasing out support for User-Agent
#328Earlier quoted context omitted.
How is "hard to not call this malice and artificial" people talking about their own experiences?
The "hard not to call" portion takes it from the realm of objective fact and into subjective measure.
The original post had the phrase "hard to not call" rather than "hard not to call".
The meaning is inverted by swapping the "to" and "not".
Re: Chrome phasing out support for User-Agent
#329Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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?
It could also be a passive, malicious de-prioritization of bugfixes for Firefox that would cause the same effect. It seems like this would be a more likely scenario.
Probably a lot of the other way around as well. Google employees likely use Chrome and Docs/Sheets heavily, so they get a rapid high-quality feedback loop with any bugs or performance issues affecting the Chrome devs and people around them.