[thelist] browser detection on server side

Shawn K. Quinn skquinn at speakeasy.net
Sat Apr 23 13:55:15 CDT 2005


On Thu, 2005-04-21 at 09:43 +0100, Christian Heilmann wrote:
   [Michael Pemberton wrote:] 
> > Is there any advantage in using the UserAgent header to alter the output
> > on a website, that client-side won't offer?
> 
> Yes, is is a JavaScript independent way to codefork. JavaScript can be
> turned off and any server side measure is more failsafe, even the bad
> ones like browser detection.

User-Agent can be quite easily jacked with by the user, so it's no more
reliable than Javascript. I've configured my computer to send User-Agent
headers of "Not Available", "Sorry, Not Available Unless You're Sitting
At My Computer", "Mozilla/9.0 (compatible; NOYB)", as well as the rather
blase' by comparison "Privoxy/3.0 (Anonymous)" and others too numerous
to mention. It's not hard to do, and becoming easier by the day.

-- 
Shawn K. Quinn <skquinn at speakeasy.net>



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