In a similar way: Why was there no Windows 9? [1] [1]: https://www.pcworld.com/article/435584/why-windows-10-isnt-n...
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Why do all browsers' user agents start with "Mozilla/"? (2008)
21–30 of 68 posts
Re: Why do all browsers' user agents start with "Mozilla/"? (2008)
#22Earlier quoted context omitted.
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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I worked on a codebase that had this bug, so I’m not sure where you’re getting “this is false” from.
We sold software that was installed long-term at customer sites, and they weren’t going to update it until they needed to, so the bug persisted in production well after we fixed it.
Re: Why do all browsers' user agents start with "Mozilla/"? (2008)
#23Mozilla 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.
The mark in this usage has gone unprotected for so long, I doubt there would be any success with that.
Also, I doubt tricking servers would indicate creating consumer confusion with the trademark.
Re: Why do all browsers' user agents start with "Mozilla/"? (2008)
#24Has anyone tried running a generic User-Agent on a standard modern browser? (By "generic", I mean one that does away with this whole compatibility dance.) I'm curious how much would break or degrade.
Re: Why do all browsers' user agents start with "Mozilla/"? (2008)
#25Has anyone tried running a generic User-Agent on a standard modern browser? (By "generic", I mean one that does away with this whole compatibility dance.) I'm curious how much would break or degrade.
Unfortunately, everything that does fingerprinting/"bot detection" will get triggered.
Re: Why do all browsers' user agents start with "Mozilla/"? (2008)
#26Earlier 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…
Amen brother.
My personal big thing was the ability to "minimise" / deque tabs, a legacy of the really early version of tabs that were basically based around the concept of the Windows task bar (and MDI), not tabs. I'm not a Firefox user as it's the least worst option, and there used to be Firefox extensions that mostly (but not quite) did it, but Mozilla naturally broke it as part of their general view that making Firefox worse will somehow make it popular[1].
Also mouse gestures. Again, you can kinda do it with Firefox, but random stuff like the home shortcut screen don't support it nowadays because???
Also, I want a status bar. I don't care if it's old fashioned, but I want one.
Sorry if this is becoming a Mozilla / Firefox gripe fest.
[1] I don't think Opera had a nice preview view for RSS feeds, but Firefox did. Then they broke it for random reasons? Gee, raw XML is so much better than a sensible view, thank you Mozilla!
Re: Why do all browsers' user agents start with "Mozilla/"? (2008)
#27Mozilla 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.
Adversarial compatibility is pretty nice though, I don't think we should do away with it.
Re: Why do all browsers' user agents start with "Mozilla/"? (2008)
#28Ironically Cloudflare blocks the real Mozilla derived browser on this Linux phone, so I can't access SO anymore. (Turnstile was broken a long time. It finally got fixed half a year ago. Now I note it does not even come up any more, just a static message that I should throw away my phone^W^W^W^W upgrade my browser. No idea whether Cloudflare or SO is to blame.)
Re: Why do all browsers' user agents start with "Mozilla/"? (2008)
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
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I worked on a codebase that had this bug, so I’m not sure where you’re getting “this is false” from. We sold software that was installed long-term at customer sites, and they weren’t going to update it until they needed to, so the bug persisted in production well after we fixed it.
Best I can tell it's only libraries that generate those sort of strings, which could just as well report a different string for Windows 9. The actual Windows API even returns the version information for Windows 8 if the application isn't manifested for 10 and onwards.
Re: Why do all browsers' user agents start with "Mozilla/"? (2008)
#30Has anyone tried running a generic User-Agent on a standard modern browser? (By "generic", I mean one that does away with this whole compatibility dance.) I'm curious how much would break or degrade.
Unfortunately, everything that does fingerprinting/"bot detection" will get triggered.
All of the privacy stuff straight up breaks the internet these days. Try using a VPN and half the time CDNs straight up refuse to serve you the JS files so sites like supermarkets or flight booking websites load broken or show some generic forbidden error.
Blanking out the user agent would have to be pushed by either Apple, Google, or Microsoft. And out of those I feel like only Apple would do it. iCloud private relay doesn’t end up breaking websites since companies care about not degrading the experience for Apple users and make sure the site still works.