If you're checking versions and not features, you're doing it wrong.
Testers Say IE11 Includes 'Like Gecko' in User Agent String
21–30 of 70 posts
Re: Testers Say IE11 Includes 'Like Gecko' in User Agent String
#22This version of IE (11) comes from the leaked Windows Blue build 9364. What you might want to consider is how MS real world test IE11 without broadcasting the user agent. I'm guessing this 'beta' version is reporting itself as Firefox to disguise itself from server logs.
Re: Testers Say IE11 Includes 'Like Gecko' in User Agent String
#23I 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.
Re: Testers Say IE11 Includes 'Like Gecko' in User Agent String
#24RFC 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…
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
Another valid reason for sniffing the user agent string is when you're trying to offer browser-specific instructions. For example, when you go to Dropbox's download page, they show you how to save and run the installer. They wrote different versions for most of the major browsers/platforms.
There are fewer reasons to use the user agent string when you're just trying to compose a web page. But composing web pages is not the only thing you do when you run a web application.
Re: Testers Say IE11 Includes 'Like Gecko' in User Agent String
#25This is good. I just had to add a meta tag to force IE9 and IE10 into IE8 Standards Mode. This was a 5 year old site that was coded to work in IE6 that stopped working properly on IE9.
Re: Testers Say IE11 Includes 'Like Gecko' in User Agent String
#26Wasn't it once that other browsers sent MSIE UA to look like IE? How times change.
Re: Testers Say IE11 Includes 'Like Gecko' in User Agent String
#27> Microsoft also included the command "Like Gecko" which instructs the website to send back the same version of the website as they would to Firefox seriously, who does that? 'msie5.0 mozilla', good times. 'like gecko' => msie trying to look like webkit, who tries to look like firefox. yeah, makes perfect sense. could anyone give an example of a modern application that checks against the user agent string?
> example of a modern application that checks against the user agent string?
I don't think this is aimed at fixing modern applications. It is aimed at much older ie 6-8 era code still on the web that has a bunch of hacks.
Re: Testers Say IE11 Includes 'Like Gecko' in User Agent String
#28RFC 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…
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 motivate vendors to fix it.
And even for browser-specific instructions, it would make more sense in my opinion to let users choose the browser for which they want to see instructions[0]: The tool I use to query information is not necessarily the tool I need help with. A bicycle shop also doesn’t decide to only sell shoes or cars if you walk or drive there rather than arriving on a bicycle[1].
[0] I didn’t check Dropbox, so it might well be that they also give people a choice here.
[1] Google’s PlayStore specifically annoyed me there recently as it didn’t let me view the description of an extension in Opera, telling me that I would need Chrome to download and use it – I do, but I’d like to know if this extension is worth installing Chrome or not beforehand.
Re: Testers Say IE11 Includes 'Like Gecko' in User Agent String
#29Dear 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
Aren't they making releases faster with IE11 compared to earlier cycles of taking years between versions? IE10 is from 5 or 6 months ago.
I thought IE10 had the ability to auto-update?
Re: Testers Say IE11 Includes 'Like Gecko' in User Agent String
#30> Microsoft also included the command "Like Gecko" which instructs the website to send back the same version of the website as they would to Firefox seriously, who does that? 'msie5.0 mozilla', good times. 'like gecko' => msie trying to look like webkit, who tries to look like firefox. yeah, makes perfect sense. could anyone give an example of a modern application that checks against the user agent string?
> could anyone give an example of a modern application that checks against the user agent string?
Gmail. Google docs, every single page titled something demo, ... basically every other site. And it should die already. Browser vendors put up with it because there are thousands and thousands of sites that wouldn't work just because you have the wrong user-agent string and the web developer was incompetent. Great examples include Chrome's idiotic string[1] and Opera's version 9.80[2].
1. Discussed around.
2. http://dev.opera.com/articles/view/opera-ua-string-changes/