11–20 of 108 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you were able to run a copy of Safari version 48, it would probably look like a Gecko-based browser before this date.
But he seems to be saying that the code that enables this is still in Safari.
> We couldn’t ship with the real Safari user agent string disabled, but we came up with the next best thing — automatically enabling it after a certain date. Does that mean that if you set the date of your computer back before 2003, the user agent will become Internet Explorer?
I just tried with Safari 6 on Mountain Lion and it does not. Obviously this must have been a feature of Safari 1.0
Does anyone know why Apple stopped doing this(or stopped doing it as thoroughly)? With the possible exception of the original, sites have consistently reported visits from iOS/iPhone:iPad user agents (and claimed that the ip originated within apple) well before launch. Recent example: http://thenextweb.com/apple/2013/01/01/developers-begin-seei...
Safari, on the other hand, was unexpected.
Does anyone know why Apple stopped doing this(or stopped doing it as thoroughly)? With the possible exception of the original, sites have consistently reported visits from iOS/iPhone:iPad user agents (and claimed that the ip originated within apple) well before launch. Recent example: http://thenextweb.com/apple/2013/01/01/developers-begin-seei...
No real information is released with these hardware model numbers that's not already reasonably known.
The only exception is for devices that people might think are end of life, or unlikely to get a refresh soon.
For instance, the Mac Pro may start showing up in logs, and that would be news, because it is so rarely updated... or it would be news if Tim Cook hadn't said that they planned to release an update (in 2013? not sure when he said it would be.)
So, knowing that iOS 7 (8, 9, etc.) are under development doesn't give away any of the secrets-- eg: what the special features of those OSes will be.
Wasn't Safari/WebKit largely based on KHTML in the beginning? This doesn't say it wasn't, but seems to imply that there was a separation of the two that was more complete than it really was.
I realize the OP is in a better position than I to know exactly what the reasoning here was, but it seems like reporting yourself as KHTML when you are largely based on the KHTML rendering engine would just be a sensible and practical thing to do outside of all this cloak and dagger stuff.
(Granted, I doubt there were very many websites, if any at all, that gave a rat's ass about special cases for KHTML compatibility).
"Which explains why the Safari user agent string has so much extra information in it, e.g. KHTML, like Gecko — the names of other browser engines." Wasn't Safari/WebKit largely based on KHTML in the beginning? This doesn't say it wasn't, but seems to imply that there was a separation of the two that was more complete than it really was. I realize the OP is in a better position than I to know exactly what the reasonin…
TLDR: for whatever reasons it was a very top-secret project, so they spoofed the user agent, the end.
"Which explains why the Safari user agent string has so much extra information in it, e.g. KHTML, like Gecko — the names of other browser engines." Wasn't Safari/WebKit largely based on KHTML in the beginning? This doesn't say it wasn't, but seems to imply that there was a separation of the two that was more complete than it really was. I realize the OP is in a better position than I to know exactly what the reasonin…
That is exactly what he is saying. They added KHTML to the user agent string to improve compatibility with servers, since Webkit was essentially KHTML anyway, not to try to hide the actual user agent. Internet Explorer is what they used when hiding the user agent.
eg. he says "the names of other browser engines", not "the name of the browser engine our code was originally based on".
The "like Gecko" part is a bit of a red herring here and mostly irrelevant, as that is simply what KHTML/Konquerer used in its own UA ("KHTML, like Gecko").
"Which explains why the Safari user agent string has so much extra information in it, e.g. KHTML, like Gecko — the names of other browser engines." Wasn't Safari/WebKit largely based on KHTML in the beginning? This doesn't say it wasn't, but seems to imply that there was a separation of the two that was more complete than it really was. I realize the OP is in a better position than I to know exactly what the reasonin…
There actually were some sites (in Europe, as I recall) that behaved a bit better when "KHTML" was in the user agent string.
I also included it as a nod to the original project. I wanted to show respect for the fine work of Lars Knoll and the other contributors.