Any utilities to remove the ALL the Microsoft formatting tags?

[Daniel R. Tobias]

I certainly agree with you on principle. I'm sure Opera did it to
avoid having customers who know little about browser sniffing download
a trial version, have it fail on various sites, and give it up as a
"broken" browser.

Some of my own discussion of the issue is at:
http://webtips.dan.info/brand-x/useragent.html

 

[Goran Larsson]

Which ones by name? Name some respected browsers who lie about their
identity. Why would anyone use these browsers anyways?

One example is MS Internet Explorer claiming to be Mozilla:
"Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.01; Windows NT)"
"Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.5; Windows 98)"
"Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.0)"

Another example is Opera claiming to be MSIE claiming to be Mozilla:
"Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1) Opera 7.11 [en]"

Also Safari claiming to be Mozilla:
"Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/85 (KHTML, like Gecko) Safari/85"

Also Konqueror claiming to be Mozilla:
"Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Konqueror/3.1; Linux)"

The majority of browsers claim to be Mozilla.

 

[Isofarro]

Which ones by name?

Produce a list of all browsers, and I'll show you a list of browsers that
can return different user-agents.

Name some respected browsers who lie about their
identity.

Please produce a reference to a specification that dictates how a browser
must identify itself, and where these browsers are breaching that
particular point.

Why would anyone use these browsers anyways?

Because it gives the users the functionality they require in a manner that
is appropriate to them.

 

[Daniel R. Tobias]

Produce a list of all browsers, and I'll show you a list of browsers that
can return different user-agents.

http://webtips.dan.info/brand-x/

Probably not *all* browsers, but as big a list of them as I've managed
to come up with.

Please produce a reference to a specification that dictates how a browser
must identify itself, and where these browsers are breaching that
particular point.

Well, there is RFC 2616:
ftp://ftp.isi.edu/in-notes/rfc2616.txt

14.43 User-Agent

The User-Agent request-header field contains information about the
user agent originating the request. This is for statistical purposes,
the tracing of protocol violations, and automated recognition of user
agents for the sake of tailoring responses to avoid particular user
agent limitations. User agents SHOULD include this field with
requests. The field can contain multiple product tokens (section 3.8)
and comments identifying the agent and any subproducts which form a
significant part of the user agent. By convention, the product tokens
are listed in order of their significance for identifying the
application.

User-Agent = "User-Agent" ":" 1*( product | comment )

Example:

User-Agent: CERN-LineMode/2.15 libwww/2.17b3

OK, this doesn't explicitly, in so many words, say it's against the
protocol to lie or mislead about what browser is being used, but it does
imply that the user-agent string should contain product info about the
browser that is being used, not about whatever other browsers happen to
be popular so that it's useful to pretend to be them.

 

[Daniel R. Tobias]

The majority of browsers claim to be Mozilla.

Seems like that's something that the mozilla.org people could somehow
use for marketing... "Stop using the imitators that only pretend to be
Mozilla, and use the real thing!"

 

[Toby A Inkster]

Which ones by name? Name some respected browsers who lie about their
identity. Why would anyone use these browsers anyways?

Internet Explorer lies about its identity. It claims to be Mozilla.

Netscape also claims to be Mozilla.

Opera in its default setting claims to be Mozilla *and* Internet Explorer
*and* Opera, although can be switched so that it claims to just be Opera
or to be Opera and some version of Mozilla.

 

[Mark Nobles]

not about whatever other browsers happen to
be popular so that it's useful to pretend to be them.

But it's not about browsers that happen to be popular, it's about
arrogant site-writers who write pages that test for which browser is
reading them, and only interact if they get the right answer. That way
they can write for the least standard-compliant browser, and reject
anything that actually expects a well-written page. Of course, by
pretending to be that non-compliant browser, any decent browser works
just fine with those pages, but it pumps up the statistics for the
convicted, illegal monopoly.

 

[karim]

Which ones by name? Name some respected browsers who lie about their
identity. Why would anyone use these browsers anyways?

One example is MS Internet Explorer claiming to be Mozilla:
"Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.01; Windows NT)"
"Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.5; Windows 98)"
"Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.0)"

Another example is Opera claiming to be MSIE claiming to be Mozilla:
"Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1) Opera 7.11 [en]"

Also Safari claiming to be Mozilla:
"Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/85 (KHTML, like Gecko) Safari/85"

Also Konqueror claiming to be Mozilla:
"Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Konqueror/3.1; Linux)"

The majority of browsers claim to be Mozilla.

These are saying they are compatible. This is different than saying I AM
that browser. Otherwise how do web servers identify the different kinds in
their logs?


Karim

 

[karim]

Produce a list of all browsers, and I'll show you a list of browsers that
can return different user-agents.

You're the one who made a claim. Why should I do your homework. If you
claim there are browsers who lie about their identity, you should be able
to supply proof. I am the one asking you to tell me which browsers do that.

Please produce a reference to a specification that dictates how a browser
must identify itself, and where these browsers are breaching that
particular point.

And you're going to tell me that the agent field is not a required one. I
went through this before with you. If all browsers use the agent field, one
can use it then. How do web servers determine the browser type? It doesn't
have to be a required one. So tell me which respected browser is going to
lie about who it really is.

Because it gives the users the functionality they require in a manner that
is appropriate to them.

Whatever these are, they are very small. Assume them as a rounding error
that can be ignored. We are interested maybe in the top 5 browsers, top 10
maybe. Others can be ignored.


Karim

 

[karim]

Internet Explorer lies about its identity. It claims to be Mozilla.

I think it says Mozilla compatible. It's says IE somewhere in the user
agent. What I am trying to say is that by looking at the user agent, you
know what browser it is. If it's Opera, I am pretty sure it says 'opera'
somewhere in the user agent string.

Lying means it's Opera and it says Mozilla and no where it says 'Opera'. So
for statistical purposes, yours numbers are wrong. That's why I asked, tell
me which respected browser that many people use is going to lie about its
real identity (meaning you can't determine what the browser is by looking
at the user agent).

karim

 

[David Venn-Brown]

Whatever these are, they are very small. Assume them as a rounding error
that can be ignored. We are interested maybe in the top 5 browsers, top 10
maybe. Others can be ignored.

You can make any browser lie about its identity. Opera just makes it an
option so that when hopeless web deziners (not you, by any chance?) try
and push away all non-IE agents, Opera slips through.

Opera 1. Dumb Deziners 0.

 

[Goran Larsson]

The majority of browsers claim to be Mozilla.

[/QUOTE]

These are saying they are compatible. This is different than saying I AM
that browser.

No. They are saying that they are "Mozilla/X.Y" and then in the comment
within ( and ) say that perhaps they are something else.

Browsers that don't lie about their identity say something like:

Opera/7.11 (Windows NT 5.0; U) [en]
Opera/7.20 (X11; SunOS sun4u; U) [en]
Bobby/4.0.1 RPT-HTTPClient/0.3-3E
Java/1.4.1_02
Jigsaw/2.2.0 W3C_CSS_Validator_JFouffa/2.0
Lynx/2.7.1 libwww-FM/2.14
Lynx/2.8.4rel.1 libwww-FM/2.14
Scooter/3.2
Scooter/3.3_SF
SurveyBot/2.3 (Whois Source)

Otherwise how do web servers identify the different kinds in
their logs?

Why should they have to? If they have to know the browser name it should
be enough to look at the "name/version" at the beginning of the string.
Unfortunately that will not work due to the lies given by most browsers.

 

[Daniel R. Tobias]

One example is MS Internet Explorer claiming to be Mozilla:
"Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.01; Windows NT)" [other examples snipped]
Another example is Opera claiming to be MSIE claiming to be Mozilla:
"Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1) Opera 7.11 [en]"

These are saying they are compatible. This is different than saying I AM
that browser. Otherwise how do web servers identify the different kinds in
their logs?

No, actually, by a strict interpretation of the standards, they're all
saying they're Mozilla. The stuff in parentheses is officially a
comment. Thus, the version of IE above is saying it's Mozilla 4.0, with
a comment to the effect that it's "compatible" (whatever that means),
and that it also relates in some unspecified way to "MSIE 5.01" and
"Windows NT". The version of Opera is saying that it, too, is Mozilla
4.0, with comments of "compatible", "MSIE 6.0", and "Windows NT 5.1",
followed by a malformed product token (with a space between name and
version instead of the proper slash) saying, oh by the way, that it's
*also* Opera 7.11.

 

[karim]

You can make any browser lie about its identity. Opera just makes it an
option so that when hopeless web deziners (not you, by any chance?) try
and push away all non-IE agents, Opera slips through.

Opera 1. Dumb Deziners 0.

Your average user is not going to change what the browser uses for its user
agent. I mean I don't see any reason an IE user will change IE's user agent
string if most sites ar eoptimized for IE. What is the reason to purposely
spoil your browsing experience?

Karim

 

[karim]

One example is MS Internet Explorer claiming to be Mozilla:
"Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.01; Windows NT)" [other examples snipped]
Another example is Opera claiming to be MSIE claiming to be Mozilla:
"Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1) Opera 7.11 [en]"

These are saying they are compatible. This is different than saying I AM
that browser. Otherwise how do web servers identify the different kinds in
their logs?

No, actually, by a strict interpretation of the standards, they're all
saying they're Mozilla. The stuff in parentheses is officially a
comment. Thus, the version of IE above is saying it's Mozilla 4.0, with
a comment to the effect that it's "compatible" (whatever that means),
and that it also relates in some unspecified way to "MSIE 5.01" and
"Windows NT". The version of Opera is saying that it, too, is Mozilla
4.0, with comments of "compatible", "MSIE 6.0", and "Windows NT 5.1",
followed by a malformed product token (with a space between name and
version instead of the proper slash) saying, oh by the way, that it's
*also* Opera 7.11.

The question now is why they care about mentioning Mozilla.

Karim

 

[David Venn-Brown]

Your average user is not going to change what the browser uses for its user
agent. I mean I don't see any reason an IE user will change IE's user agent
string if most sites ar eoptimized for IE. What is the reason to purposely
spoil your browsing experience?

Because some people are dumb.

 

[karim]

These are saying they are compatible. This is different than saying I AM
that browser.

No. They are saying that they are "Mozilla/X.Y" and then in the comment
within ( and ) say that perhaps they are something else.

Browsers that don't lie about their identity say something like:

Opera/7.11 (Windows NT 5.0; U) [en]
Opera/7.20 (X11; SunOS sun4u; U) [en]
Bobby/4.0.1 RPT-HTTPClient/0.3-3E
Java/1.4.1_02
Jigsaw/2.2.0 W3C_CSS_Validator_JFouffa/2.0
Lynx/2.7.1 libwww-FM/2.14
Lynx/2.8.4rel.1 libwww-FM/2.14
Scooter/3.2
Scooter/3.3_SF
SurveyBot/2.3 (Whois Source)

Otherwise how do web servers identify the different kinds in
their logs?

Why should they have to? If they have to know the browser name it should
be enough to look at the "name/version" at the beginning of the string.
Unfortunately that will not work due to the lies given by most browsers.[/QUOTE]

Webmasters like to know what browsers visit their sites.
From the user agent you can know which browser it is although the format is
unusual. The browser's identity is in a comment instead of the main entry.

Karim

 

[GreyWyvern]

The question now is why they care about mentioning Mozilla.

Karim

They shouldn't really, anymore. But in those bygone days when
Netscape/Mozilla introduced JavaScript and the Image object, browser
specific coding exploded everywhere. Thousands of websites actively
searched for "Mozilla" in the user-agent string, because then they knew
that the browser was capable of applying JavaScript to page elements and
able to use the Image object.

So when MicroSoft released it's new browser with the same capabilities,
they didn't want it to be served plain-jane content when it encountered
all of these browser detection scripts. So they made their user agent
string similar to Mozilla's

The days when we needed such an effort are long past IMHO, although
browser-detection still takes place - albeit not using "Mozilla".

I'm willing to bet that for IE7 on Longhorn, MS will give it a new user
agent string which will finally abandon the useless inclusion of "Mozilla"

Grey

 

[David Venn-Brown]

They shouldn't really, anymore. But in those bygone days when
Netscape/Mozilla introduced JavaScript and the Image object, browser
specific coding exploded everywhere. Thousands of websites actively
searched for "Mozilla" in the user-agent string, because then they knew
that the browser was capable of applying JavaScript to page elements and
able to use the Image object.

So when MicroSoft released it's new browser with the same capabilities,
they didn't want it to be served plain-jane content when it encountered
all of these browser detection scripts. So they made their user agent
string similar to Mozilla's

The days when we needed such an effort are long past IMHO, although
browser-detection still takes place - albeit not using "Mozilla".

I'm willing to bet that for IE7 on Longhorn, MS will give it a new user
agent string which will finally abandon the useless inclusion of "Mozilla"

I don't think so:
1. They're Microsoft. Past experience shows that it isn't this sort of
thing that they change.
2. A lot of people will still be unhappy if they change the Mozilla bit.
A number of scripts will still break (even if they were flawed to begin
with). By familiarity people know what to expect for an IE UA string so
there would be little incentive to change it.

IMO, what is more likely is that IE7 will make an implementation similar
to Opera: The 'classic' setting will be something like "Mozilla/4.0
(compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 5.0)". However, they might phase in a
second option, maybe as a part of their 'compliance' mode, a string like
"MSIE/7.0 (Windows NT 5.0; Mozilla/4.0 compatible)". Actually I think
the next version of IE will have to take a few cues off Opera and
Mozilla if it is to stay competitive.

Speaking of which, when is IE7 due out?

 

[Beauregard T. Shagnasty]

David Venn-Brown pounced upon this pigeonhole and pronounced:

Speaking of which, when is IE7 due out?

2006. And you will have to buy the operating system to get it.

http://www.entmag.com/news/article.asp?EditorialsID=5925
http://minutillo.com/steve/weblog/2003/5/30/microsoft-announces-ie-is-dead