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Testers Say IE11 Includes 'Like Gecko' in User Agent String

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Re: Testers Say IE11 Includes 'Like Gecko' in User Agent String

#41

Post by randomdata »

claudius wrote: post #11

RFC 2616[0] says in section 14.43 that user agents SHOULD send a User-Agent field. Is there any particular reason why it is still sensible to send such a field at all, rather than maybe something more generic like ‘Crawler’, ‘Graphical’ and ‘Terminal’ (to distinguish the three cases that might come to mind immediately)? In other words, what benefit does a User-Agent field have nowadays when people are told to check f…

A good client will send a distinguishable user agent because the server may want to reject requests from that client. There is no robots.txt equivalent for user-initiated clients, so user agents are the appropriate way to handle the situation.

It is unlikely that you will want to block a traditional web browser, but web browsers are not the only clients available and some will be performing operations that are not necessarily in line with the wishes of your resources.

Re: Testers Say IE11 Includes 'Like Gecko' in User Agent String

#42

Post by kijin »

claudius wrote: post #28
kijin wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are several situations where a web app has no choice but to rely on the user agent string to vary its behavior. For example, when you let a user download a file, you usually send a header such as: Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=FILENAME But what do you do if the filename contains non-ASCII characters? There are RFCs, but every browser has its own rules about encoding, and IE is especially problematic…

I understand the point about browser-specific instructions, but using the User-Agent to decide how to encode a file name sounds…wrong. Imagine your email client checking the email client of the recipient to decide how to encode the file name of the file you attached – sure, it’s nice if it is possible, but in general, standards are supposed to be, well, standards, and not caring about broken software might help motiv…

> using the User-Agent to decide how to encode a file name sounds…wrong.

Of course it's wrong, and web devs wouldn't have to do it in an ideal world. But when your Chinese users complain right now that their attachment names are getting jumbled, and when your conversion rate is going down right now because people don't run the files they've downloaded, does it really matter whose job it is to clean up Microsoft's mess?

BTW, non-ASCII attachment names still come out weird from time to time because Outlook, Thunderbird, and various webmails follow different RFCs. Most email composing tools just use a compromise that works 99.9% of the time, but I've seen programs that let you customize the filename encoding.

Re: Testers Say IE11 Includes 'Like Gecko' in User Agent String

#43

Post by tanzam75 »

bargl wrote: post #23

I want to start by saying, this article needs a giant dose of grain-o-salt. The PS4 was leaked like how many times? And, we all know how that went. However, As someone who is locked into an app that is tied to IE 6-7, I don't relish the idea of being forced to re-write some 50,000+ lines of legacy code. This does however force our customers to seriously consider putting out an effort to redesign in the first place.

> I don't relish the idea of being forced to re-write some 50,000+ lines of legacy code.

You don't have to. Simply set the DOCTYPE to force IE7 quirks mode.

This move is clearly intended to improve compatibility with Internet applications.

Re: Testers Say IE11 Includes 'Like Gecko' in User Agent String

#44

Post by TazeTSchnitzel »

tzaman wrote: post #14

Dear Microsoft, other browser vendors release new versions on a regular basis, regardless of the operating system number. This enables browser-related technologies to evolve at a more rapid pace. So please do us all a favor and stop locking major IE releases to Windows versions and just try to imitate what others do. We won't judge you for copying, promise. Sincerely, Web developers

Well, it does require more effort on Microsoft's part to support old versions of Windows. They always use new APIs, and they often bring big improvements and have to be backported to work. For example, either IE10 or IE9 used DirectWrite, which had to be backported.

Also, it wouldn't make sense for them to release new updates for officially out-of-support OS versions.

Re: Testers Say IE11 Includes 'Like Gecko' in User Agent String

#45

Post by TazeTSchnitzel »

wkdown wrote: post #33
tzaman wrote: post #14

Dear Microsoft, other browser vendors release new versions on a regular basis, regardless of the operating system number. This enables browser-related technologies to evolve at a more rapid pace. So please do us all a favor and stop locking major IE releases to Windows versions and just try to imitate what others do. We won't judge you for copying, promise. Sincerely, Web developers

Is this because it is tied to Window Explorer (the Windows file system)? Or is it because the developers are dense.

Internet Explorer usually relies on new OS features which have to be backported. Also, Microsoft never releases IE for versions of Windows that have gone out of support (Windows XP and Vista), because they don't want to have to do the extra work to do so, and because their policy on out-of-support is exactly that: mo new updates.

Re: Testers Say IE11 Includes 'Like Gecko' in User Agent String

#46

Post by TazeTSchnitzel »

daleharvey wrote: post #13
zalew wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I meant 'who does check that user agent', edited to clarify.

A lot of people, on Firefox OS we have a blacklist of sites we have to send Android like user agents to so we are served mobile friendly content: https://github.com/mozilla-b2g/gaia/blob/master/build/ua-ove... Its a sad situation.

YouTube is a particularly bad offender. Linked to their mobile site on a desktop? You get the ultra-basic WAP-like version, instead of the smartphone version or a redirect to the desktop version. Linked to their mobile site in Opera Mini? Yep, WAP-like version, despite the fact that Opera Mini would have no problems with the smartphone version.

Re: Testers Say IE11 Includes 'Like Gecko' in User Agent String

#47

Post by anonymfus »

TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #44
tzaman wrote: post #14

Dear Microsoft, other browser vendors release new versions on a regular basis, regardless of the operating system number. This enables browser-related technologies to evolve at a more rapid pace. So please do us all a favor and stop locking major IE releases to Windows versions and just try to imitate what others do. We won't judge you for copying, promise. Sincerely, Web developers

Well, it does require more effort on Microsoft's part to support old versions of Windows. They always use new APIs, and they often bring big improvements and have to be backported to work. For example, either IE10 or IE9 used DirectWrite, which had to be backported. Also, it wouldn't make sense for them to release new updates for officially out-of-support OS versions .

>For example, either IE10 or IE9 used DirectWrite

Direct2D. DirectWrite is old technology. Direct2D is used by IE9+.

Re: Testers Say IE11 Includes 'Like Gecko' in User Agent String

#49

Post by TazeTSchnitzel »

anonymfus wrote: post #47
TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, it does require more effort on Microsoft's part to support old versions of Windows. They always use new APIs, and they often bring big improvements and have to be backported to work. For example, either IE10 or IE9 used DirectWrite, which had to be backported. Also, it wouldn't make sense for them to release new updates for officially out-of-support OS versions .

>For example, either IE10 or IE9 used DirectWrite Direct2D. DirectWrite is old technology. Direct2D is used by IE9+.

No, they re-used a trademark. DirectWrite refers to their new text rendering subsystem:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-gb/library/windows/desktop/dd36...

Note the backport:

>Windows 7 or Windows Vista with Service Pack 2 (SP2) and Platform Update for Windows Vista

Re: Testers Say IE11 Includes 'Like Gecko' in User Agent String

#50

Post by gavinlynch »

bdcravens wrote: post #21

If you're checking versions and not features, you're doing it wrong.

Yes. Correct me if I'm mistaken, but whatever client-side code is affected by this violates principals of Progressive Enhancement/Graceful Degradation and the Browser Sniffing anti-pattern.
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