[HN Gopher] Mozilla tests if 'Firefox/100.0' user agent breaks w...
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Mozilla tests if 'Firefox/100.0' user agent breaks websites
Author : Pick-A-Hill2019
Score : 41 points
Date : 2021-08-13 20:09 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bleepingcomputer.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bleepingcomputer.com)
| captainmuon wrote:
| If you are using user-agent for anything other than statistics,
| you are likely doing something wrong...
|
| And it would be a shame if Firefox didn't implement something,
| even so minor like a new version number, 'just' because sites
| break. You are Mozilla, send them a mail and give them a week to
| fix it, because you are f'ing Mozilla. I'm glad this is
| apparently just what they did here.
|
| (Same thing when NVIDIA or Microsoft do contortions to support
| broken games. You already fixed the function or shader; don't
| hotpatch it but send it to the vendor and tell them to merge it
| or else...)
| chrisseaton wrote:
| > You are Mozilla, send them a mail and give them a week to fix
| it, because you are f'ing Mozilla.
|
| Mozilla has a user-base of like 3%.
|
| They don't have any clout at all. They should be grovelling to
| and thanking any website that bothers to support them, not
| trying to give ultimatums.
|
| > don't hotpatch it but send it to the vendor and tell them to
| merge it or else...
|
| But this is a user-hostile approach. No thanks.
| diegoperini wrote:
| User-base has no importance, dev-base is what matters here.
| If Mozilla sends a letter to developers, chances are those
| people already stumbled upon MDN multiple times when they
| looked for answers to web development related questions.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| Why would developers care about a browser that their users
| don't use?
| kelnos wrote:
| All the web developers I know use and test on Chrome. If
| they test on Firefox, it's as an afterthought.
| edoceo wrote:
| Hello! Know you know one who builds and tests on FF.
| godelski wrote:
| > If you are using user-agent for anything other than
| statistics, you are likely doing something wrong...
|
| Except it is very common. Back before FF included DRM
| (optional) I couldn't get Netflix on Linux FF. But if I
| switched the UA string to FF Windows or Linux Chrome I could
| watch it. Contacted Netflix and they said "we don't use UA
| strings to block people." But it isn't just Netflix. I've seen
| this happen many times with many different websites (no
| problems since DRM is enabled on FF).
|
| I don't disagree with you, but the amount of people doing
| "something wrong" is staggering. And it isn't just the little
| guys.
|
| Also, Mozilla is what, 3.45%? I don't think people care unless
| you're Chrome or Safari (combined are ~85%).
| nonbirithm wrote:
| There is still a possibility that Mozilla's improvements can
| break backwards compatibility. One time they attempted to
| improve Firefox's error message for undefined property accesses
| in JavaScript, but it caused breaking changes because some
| websites relied on parsing the old error message format.
|
| Mozilla's response was to roll back the change instead of
| blaming the users. The alternative was letting Firefox lose
| market share to Chrome because the websites people wanted to
| use didn't work. At least one major e-commerce website
| (Flipkart) was actively losing sales because of the bug.
|
| Mozilla trying to strongarm people into using web features the
| "right" way sounds like something Google would do.
|
| https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1488417
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19492660
| nicoburns wrote:
| The other valid use case is blacklisting buggy browser
| versions. Some browsers will claim to support a feature but it
| doesn't actually work (e.g. indexeddb in some versions of
| safari). The only way to detect is using the user agent.
| kelnos wrote:
| > _You are Mozilla, send them a mail and give them a week to
| fix it, because you are f 'ing Mozilla._
|
| I think you vastly overestimate Mozilla's clout on the internet
| these days.
| geofft wrote:
| "Attention all employees: Chrome is the only approved browser
| for accessing HR websites. Please DO NOT use Firefox for
| accessing HR websites."
| kunagi7 wrote:
| Well, Chrome recently released their 92nd version... The same
| thing could happen to them really soon. Should they keep the
| user agent as version 99 indefinitely too? User agents
| shouldn't be as relevant as they are.
| function_seven wrote:
| When a new Firefox release breaks a website, the browser is
| broken.
|
| When a new Chrome or Safari release breaks a website, the
| website is broken.
|
| I hate myself for typing that out, but it's true. Chrome
| has the luxury of dictating terms to sites that IE used to
| have 10 years ago. Firefox has never had such a dominant
| position, so they need to shoulder some of the burden
| themselves to ensure remaining users aren't forced to
| switch.
| [deleted]
| asddubs wrote:
| I'd like to see you implement SameSite=None cookies without
| user agent sniffing. Still pisses me off that a bunch of
| browser vendors decided to break backwards compatibility so
| badly you're literally forced to sniff for user agents
|
| https://catchjs.com/Blog/SameSiteCookies
| stuartd wrote:
| As a long-time Nightly build user as my main browser (since
| Phoenix 0.4 or so), I'm used to things breaking. So set my UA to
| this to see if anything happens:
|
| > Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.15; rv:93.0)
| Gecko/20100101 Firefox/1930.0
|
| Edit: a blast from the past - an early Nightly Build post from
| Peter(6) on mozillazine -
| http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=102633
| francislavoie wrote:
| iOS 10 did break some things years ago, so this is a totally
| sensible test to do.
| Isognoviastoma wrote:
| > Firefox is may freeze the user agent to a two-digit number like
| "Firefox/99.0."
|
| Opera did that when version went up from 9 to 10. Too many
| websites looked at first digit of version rather that doing
| feature discovery back then.
|
| Useragent string of Opera 12 is "Opera/9.80 (Windows NT 6.1;
| WOW64) Presto/2.12.388 Version/12.18".
| TMWNN wrote:
| Is it true that Microsoft skipped Windows 9 because too many
| applications check for "Windows 9*", and would have thought that
| they are running on Windows 95 or 98?
| captainmuon wrote:
| None of the native APIs return the version number as a string,
| and to see a version > Vista you need to declare the minimum
| supported version anyway. But I can see this being a problem in
| some scripted languages, maybe.
|
| Personally I believe they wanted to avoid Windows NEIN, or it's
| some marketing BS to jump a number and pull up to OS X (10).
| 0xcde4c3db wrote:
| I think that concern was _mostly_ apocryphal, but such things
| demonstrably do exist [1]: } else if
| (osName.startsWith("Windows")) { if
| (osName.indexOf("9") != -1) { jvm =
| WINDOWS_9x;
|
| [1] https://github.com/Elblonko/kepler/blob/48618dc2233781656
| e63...
| LawnGnome wrote:
| They've never confirmed it, but yes, that was the strong
| suspicion at the time.
|
| Fortunately, they've got some runway before Windows 30 brings
| back the same problem.
| jandrese wrote:
| LOL.
|
| Luckily for future people they already can't run those old 16
| bit programs. The 64 bit transition finally put the last nail
| in that coffin.
| jandrese wrote:
| It strikes me as plausible. If the devs thought that Microsoft
| was going to keep their year based naming system then it
| wouldn't be a problem for another 100 years, by which point
| they would be long dead and it would be someone else's problem.
| The fact that there were two versions to check also meant that
| the shortcut of only checking the first digit is
| understandable. Also, if the version strings included extra
| cruft, like Windows 98SE2 then stopping the check early makes
| sense over trying for explicit string matches.
|
| Of course Windows 10 was supposed to be the last version ever
| in Apple OSX style, but now we have beta for Windows 11. The
| lesson is: never trust what Microsoft tells you about their
| intentions.
| [deleted]
| beebeepka wrote:
| Are there any legitimate reasons to care about the user agent in
| this day and age? If you're still serving different css/js based
| on a self reported identification, then chances are your
| motivation is questionable.
|
| Not unlike certain CPU and GPU makers. Frankly, I am surprised
| any of this is still matters. Guess I am still just an old an
| naive summer child
| bserge wrote:
| Of course, anything that has a remote possiblity of affecting
| ads, popups and content block screens would adversely affect
| revenue.
| freediver wrote:
| User agent string lost most if its meaning and is often abused.
|
| Safari even froze its UA string to help against browser
| fingerprinting (giving less bits of information).
|
| Unfortunately it is still the only way to somewhat distinguish
| browsers without using javascript.
| DeepYogurt wrote:
| Easy fix. Ship Firefox2/1.0 /s
| snug wrote:
| Firefox2 0.0.1
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28154187
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(page generated 2021-08-13 23:01 UTC)