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Testers Say IE11 Includes 'Like Gecko' in User Agent String
51–60 of 70 posts
Re: Testers Say IE11 Includes 'Like Gecko' in User Agent String
#52If you're checking versions and not features, you're doing it wrong.
Really. How about iOS 6 safari having support for fixed elements that breaks every time the keyboard pops up?
Re: Testers Say IE11 Includes 'Like Gecko' in User Agent String
#53"> 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"
This is a little misleading. "Like Gecko" is not used in the Firefox UA String. It just says Gecko. "Like Gecko" is a component of Webkit-based browsers. So IE is emulating Webkit emulating Firefox, and dries the "MS" of "MSEI" for their string, and going with just "IE".
via Peter Paul-Koch: "IE11 to disguise itself as WebKit (and not Firefox!)", http://mobilism.nl/blog/2013/03/ie11-to-disguise-itself
Re: Testers Say IE11 Includes 'Like Gecko' in User Agent String
#54If companies are going to start messing with user agent strings again, can we please try to restore some sanity? How about "Internet Explorer 11.0" as a user agent? Would that be so hard?
Would that be so hard?
Are you being facetious? As far as users are concerned, IE would be broken. Users don't care that it's because of, say, websites with broken useragent sniffing.
I'm sure it's even more complicated than that, to be honest. But the overarching principle something Josh Bloch articulated. He said something to the effect that any interface that you publish, even if it includes strings (e.g. a pretty-printed stack trace), will inevitably become part of the interface.
Re: Testers Say IE11 Includes 'Like Gecko' in User Agent String
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Out of mainstream support. See http://support.microsoft.com/lifecycle/
Re: Testers Say IE11 Includes 'Like Gecko' in User Agent String
#56If companies are going to start messing with user agent strings again, can we please try to restore some sanity? How about "Internet Explorer 11.0" as a user agent? Would that be so hard?
Good idea. I'd prefer it to be slightly more structured e.g. "Microsoft; Internet Explorer; 11.0"
Maker, product name and version should be good enough for everyone.
Re: Testers Say IE11 Includes 'Like Gecko' in User Agent String
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Out of mainstream support. See http://support.microsoft.com/lifecycle/
Yes. Extended support means no updates aside from security.
Re: Testers Say IE11 Includes 'Like Gecko' in User Agent String
#58Dear 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.
Unless you're using Windows 7, in which case that was on Feb 23 (30 days ago.)
Re: Testers Say IE11 Includes 'Like Gecko' in User Agent String
#59This 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.
Could you not just fix it? Or drop support for IE6/7/8 and only support the newer IE browsers?
Re: Testers Say IE11 Includes 'Like Gecko' in User Agent String
#60This 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.
Could you not just fix it? Or drop support for IE6/7/8 and only support the newer IE browsers?
Considering the task assigned to me was to make it properly on IE9, I don't think so. The meta tag was a piece of cake, though. It was the month or so when one person on the client's staff couldn't use it, before the client reported it to me, that was troubling.
To answer the second part of your question, it worked on IE 6/7/8 and removing the hacks would have required digging into old code. The meta tag was much quicker!