[thelist] User agent: browser and OS

[CodeBitch]

David Shadovitz <david_shadovitz at xontech.com> wrote

> A few days ago Matt posted the May '02 stats for evolt.org.  I'm
> interested in doing the same for my site, and so I'd like to know his
> rules for categorizing the user agent by browser and OS.  You've got to
> know what you're doing, since, for example, the user agent for Opera
> contains both "MSIE" and "Opera".  Feel free to chime in.

Simple answer:

(1) use Analog http://www.analog.cx/.
It does the OS categorisations for you, correctly identifies Opera, Galeon
and Konqueror. Recent versions identify WinXP correctly, and Mozilla
separately from Netscape, but the config files need a tweak to put Netscape
7 PR1 in the Netscape group.

(2) use my config file http://www.macedition.com/cb/manconf.cfg
This will additionally ensure that OmniWeb, iCab, and a bunch of minor
browsers and search engine spiders are correctly identified.

If you want to know subversions, you must add the SUBBROW */*.* command to
the analog.cfg file that comes with Analog.

Hope that helps.

Regards,
CB
http://www.macedition.com/cb/