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Why do all browsers' user agents start with "Mozilla/"? (2008)

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Re: Why do all browsers' user agents start with "Mozilla/"? (2008)

#11

Post by JdeBP »

shmerl wrote: post #3

Really weird and convoluted reasons for it. A better question is why it was never fixed / renamed to proper names.

Possibly, but it wouldn't be the first time that people took a field that was supposed to be an originator name and made it something else entirely.

There's a field in the Volume Boot Record of disc volumes, in the PC compatible world, that was supposed to be the name of the OEM whose software formatted the volume. It was (and is) a few bytes of identifying human-readable text. Operating systems ended up doing string comparisons and parsing numbers, and breaking in odd ways, including not even recognizing their own handiwork, when operating system vendors did not use the name of the first vendor.

* https://jdebp.uk/FGA/volume-boot-block-oem-name-field.html

It has probably been long enough since MS-DOS 3.3 and in turn the Browser Wars that someone is right now failing to learn from history and making this mistake anew, yet again, somewhere.

Re: Why do all browsers' user agents start with "Mozilla/"? (2008)

#14

Post by imiric »

fredoralive wrote: post #8
shmerl wrote: post #3

Really weird and convoluted reasons for it. A better question is why it was never fixed / renamed to proper names.

To avoid breaking stuff basically, easier to have ugly UA strings than persuade every site that does weird UA parsing to fix themselves. The main exception to this was Opera back when it had its own engine, which did use Opera at the start of its fairly clean default UA string. Then when they reached version 10 they had to make the primary version 9 with a second real version later in the string as sites couldn’t cop…

I miss Opera. It's a damn shame that it was so badly mismanaged, and ultimately sold off to investors, which further buried it into irrelevance. It now survives on gaming-oriented gimmicks and shady promotions. I hear that Vivaldi is supposed to be a continuation of it, but from what I've seen it's just another Chromium clone with a closed-source UI, without any distinguishing features.

Opera in the late 90s / early 2000s was excellent. It was lightweight and snappy. Among the first to support tabs. The Presto engine was the most performant on machines of the era. The trialware/adware was annoying, but the browser was solid. The built-in email client was decent as well.

In 2009 they launched a very interesting web server / sharing feature with Opera Unite, which unfortunately didn't gain traction.

Opera Mini was the best mobile browser for a few years as well, before smartphones took off.

Re: Why do all browsers' user agents start with "Mozilla/"? (2008)

#15

Post by wolrah »

shmerl wrote: post #3

Really weird and convoluted reasons for it. A better question is why it was never fixed / renamed to proper names.

> A better question is why it was never fixed / renamed to proper names.

Because the reason it is the way it is in the first place is compatibility with sites that are doing things objectively wrong already, which makes it really hard to get them to change.

The problem is that poorly designed systems limit access or disable features based on a user-agent allowlist, which is never the right answer. There is no right way to do it because it's always wrong, but people choose to do it anyways.

I'm personally a fan of treating broken sites as broken, but I understand that realistically any "alternative" browser has to deal with all the broken sites designed for whatever came before it because otherwise most normal users won't consider switching.

If I were made King of the Internet for a day and able to enforce any changes I wanted on everyone, all the major browsers would have to change their user-agent string to something totally unique on the same day, intentionally breaking any sites that are doing it wrong for everyone so the broken sites are forced to fix their own nonsense. That'd come maybe two or three decrees down the line from "All ISPs are required to provide a globally routable IPv6 block in accordance with RFC 6177, providing only CGN IPv4 is a capital offense".

Re: Why do all browsers' user agents start with "Mozilla/"? (2008)

#16

Post by FirmwareBurner »

imiric wrote: post #14
fredoralive wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To avoid breaking stuff basically, easier to have ugly UA strings than persuade every site that does weird UA parsing to fix themselves. The main exception to this was Opera back when it had its own engine, which did use Opera at the start of its fairly clean default UA string. Then when they reached version 10 they had to make the primary version 9 with a second real version later in the string as sites couldn’t cop…

I miss Opera. It's a damn shame that it was so badly mismanaged, and ultimately sold off to investors, which further buried it into irrelevance. It now survives on gaming-oriented gimmicks and shady promotions. I hear that Vivaldi is supposed to be a continuation of it, but from what I've seen it's just another Chromium clone with a closed-source UI, without any distinguishing features. Opera in the late 90s / early…

>It's a damn shame that it was so badly mismanaged

I think even the best management in the world wouldn't have helped it survive the onslaught of Google's Chrome and their massive war chest in that time. It's like a team of girl scouts versus the NBA.

Re: Why do all browsers' user agents start with "Mozilla/"? (2008)

#17

Post by uxjw »

RainyDayTmrw wrote: post #10

In a similar way: Why was there no Windows 9? [1] [1]: https://www.pcworld.com/article/435584/why-windows-10-isnt-n...

TL;DR: Some code looking for Windows 95 or 98 only looked for "Windows 9" to match both, and would have matched Windows 9.

Now Apple has the year in the OS version we'll have people wondering in a few years what happened to iOS 19-25.

Re: Why do all browsers' user agents start with "Mozilla/"? (2008)

#18

Post by wvbdmp »

impure wrote: post #6

Mozilla should start charging a licensing fee for starting your user agent with Mozilla/ Money problems solved!

In a way it seems like a classic trademark violation, tricking people (or their servers) into thinking your product is someone else’s. I wonder if there are actual agreements about this these days.

Re: Why do all browsers' user agents start with "Mozilla/"? (2008)

#19

Post by [deleted] »

FirmwareBurner wrote: post #16
imiric wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I miss Opera. It's a damn shame that it was so badly mismanaged, and ultimately sold off to investors, which further buried it into irrelevance. It now survives on gaming-oriented gimmicks and shady promotions. I hear that Vivaldi is supposed to be a continuation of it, but from what I've seen it's just another Chromium clone with a closed-source UI, without any distinguishing features. Opera in the late 90s / early…

>It's a damn shame that it was so badly mismanaged I think even the best management in the world wouldn't have helped it survive the onslaught of Google's Chrome and their massive war chest in that time. It's like a team of girl scouts versus the NBA.

[deleted]

Re: Why do all browsers' user agents start with "Mozilla/"? (2008)

#20

Post by DecentShoes »

uxjw wrote: post #17
RainyDayTmrw wrote: post #10

In a similar way: Why was there no Windows 9? [1] [1]: https://www.pcworld.com/article/435584/why-windows-10-isnt-n...

TL;DR: Some code looking for Windows 95 or 98 only looked for "Windows 9" to match both, and would have matched Windows 9. Now Apple has the year in the OS version we'll have people wondering in a few years what happened to iOS 19-25.

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