Any utilities to remove the ALL the Microsoft formatting tags?

[David Venn-Brown]

David Venn-Brown pounced upon this pigeonhole and pronounced:



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

Whoa, if they leave IE7 until then and release only with the OS, they're
surely going to lose a large portion of the market. IE6 is already past
its shelf life and I reckon in a year at the most, the general internet
population is going to work that one out.

MS must know this - what's their motive? I guess that now Netscape's a
goner they don't particularly care.

 

[Goran Larsson]

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.

Are browser writers so ashamed of their browsers name that they have to
use the name of another browser and hide their own browsers name in a
comment?

 

[karim]

Whoa, if they leave IE7 until then and release only with the OS, they're
surely going to lose a large portion of the market. IE6 is already past
its shelf life and I reckon in a year at the most, the general internet
population is going to work that one out.

MS must know this - what's their motive? I guess that now Netscape's a
goner they don't particularly care.

Why do you say IE 6 is past its shelf life? What big features that IE is
lacking or are you used to the constant MS upgrades? It took Mozilla 4
years just to come out with its first version.
First there's this EOLAS embedded apps half a billion dollars lawsuit that
MS needs to figure out before putting out a new major version. This lawsuit
might go against macormedia also with its Flash product. It's making a lot
of people nervous.

Karim

 

[David Venn-Brown]

Why do you say IE 6 is past its shelf life? What big features that IE is
lacking or are you used to the constant MS upgrades? It took Mozilla 4
years just to come out with its first version.
First there's this EOLAS embedded apps half a billion dollars lawsuit that
MS needs to figure out before putting out a new major version. This lawsuit
might go against macormedia also with its Flash product. It's making a lot
of people nervous.

I suggest you download Opera and Mozilla. These two browsers (Opera
especially, because it is faster browser, but Mozilla has an ever
increasing rate of development) are at least a few years ahead of IE in
terms of features. They have:

* Better security.
* Features like tabbed browsing (meaning that you can have open and
manage a number of different pages without cluttering up the taskbar -
this is excellent. Opera also remembers what pages you had open last
time you used it) and mouse gestures (until you have used them it is
difficult to describe how great they are for navigating a web page).
* More intelligent interfaces, with a more modern design (Both are
skinnable and Opera's default skin comes in several colours. This point
shouldn't be underrated for the average user).
* Both have better search engine support. In Opera, there is a both next
to the url that lets you search Google, AllTheWeb, Super Search, Lycos,
Amazon, Ebay, News, Download.com and about fifteen others. Mozilla has
similar features.
* More customizable for the advanced user.
* Better standards support, again for advanced users.
* Opera has several featurs for the sight impaired to control how a site
is viewed (changes colour schemes of websites to high contrast, etc).
* Both Mozilla and Opera have their own mail and newsgroup agents. Both
far surpass Outlook Express.
* Both have their own inbuilt download managers that show progress and
have resume abilities if the connection is lost.
* Internet Explorer Favourites etc can be imported.

My version of Mozilla isn't the latest (I have 1.4a, I think the
Firebird version has been released), but it is very fractionally slower
than IE. Opera is far far faster than both of them. However, Mozilla's
rapid rate of development means that this will probably be ironed out
quite quickly.

As a whole, these two browsers are already in another league, and if you
consider the fact that they've got three years to consolidate on this
technological superiority, IE is going to really be lagging in
2005-2006. Who knows a) what new features will be put in to
Mozilla/Opera during that time, and b) what the market trends will be.
By 2006, there could be a serious trend away from IE6 that IE7 cannot stop.

Don't get me wrong: IE6 isn't that bad a browser if you get the security
right, it's just that it doesn't have that edge.

Also remember that Mozilla was an open-source project. I find it amazing
that they got a first version out at all - and now they are flying! They
had no real corporate backing (if any) and only a charasmatic hierachy.

 

[Robert G. Eldridge]

What big features that IE is lacking ...

Compliance with the HTTP spec for one.

 

[Chris Morris]

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.

Fine, among others:

Opera (*defaults* to identifying as IE, can identify as Opera or various
Netscapes)

Konqueror (can identify as just about anything, including
various IEs, plugins available to make this easy)

Mozilla (can identify as just about anything, probably Netscape 6+ can
therefore be made to do the same, plugins available to make this easy)

IBM Home Page Reader (uses IE to get the page, so appears to be IE,
but its parsing and display is completely different) - similar
comments apply to other screen readers.

w3m (Freeform text entry available for UA, defaults to w3m)

wget (Freeform text entry available for UA, defaults to wget)

links (Freeform text entry available for UA, defaults to Links)

That's just the ones I can think of in a minute or so.

Also, any browser (including IE) can be put behind a proxy that will
rewrite the UA string to be an arbitrary string (including something
that appears to be IE)

 

[Chris Morris]

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).

See my other post, but ignore the entry for Opera, then. All the
others are capable of *easily* looking *exactly* like Internet
Explorer or indeed any other browser. Opera is probably capable of it
too, but it just isn't particularly easy to configure it to do so.

 

[Brian]

Are browser writers so ashamed of their browsers name that they have to
use the name of another browser and hide their own browsers name in a
comment?

Have you actually read this thread? Yes? Then surely you know why ua
strings are forged, and that your comment is silly.

 

[Goran Larsson]

Have you actually read this thread? Yes?
Yes.

Then surely you know why ua
strings are forged, and that your comment is silly.

It is the forging of the User-Agent strings that are silly. It just
makes it easier for incompetent web page authors.

 

[Jonathan Snook]

It is the forging of the User-Agent strings that are silly. It just
makes it easier for incompetent web page authors.

I'd say it makes it harder. With forging the UA string, the web page author
never know what browser they are getting. Therefore, they should develop for
all browsers to make sure. If a web page author knew exactly what browser
was accessing their site then it would be easier for them to lock out
browsers they don't like (annoying web page users to no end).

Jonathan
www.snook.ca

 

[Chris Morris]

(and harder for those of us who like looking through the UA strings to
see if there's another browser to add to our collection)

I'd say it makes it harder. With forging the UA string, the web page author
never know what browser they are getting.

....provided they're aware of UA modification in browsers...

Therefore, they should develop for all browsers to make sure.

....but will probably just say 'well, 99.9% of my hits are from IE'
when they mean '99.9% of my hits have a UA string that looks like IE'.

 

[Alan J. Flavell]

...but will probably just say 'well, 99.9% of my hits are from IE'
when they mean '99.9% of my hits have a UA string that looks like IE'.

I find it rather instructive that so many web authors appear to
believe that IE is in need of having web pages constructed
specifically for itself: they must believe that it's incapable of
browsing web pages that have been made for the World Wide Web.

Well, sure, I know a bunch of ways of making WWW-compliant web pages
that would throw IE into a tizzy, but that's only because I've studied
its weak points. In everyday web page design they'd rarely be an
issue IMHO.

 

[Brian]

With forging the UA string, the web page author never know what
browser they are getting. Therefore, they should develop for all
browsers to make sure.

....which surely is the easiest route.

 

[Bill Clark]

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

As I'm sure you know, but this is a good place to jump in, there are also
proxy servers that spoof UAs...

 

[karim]

See my other post, but ignore the entry for Opera, then. All the
others are capable of *easily* looking *exactly* like Internet
Explorer or indeed any other browser. Opera is probably capable of it
too, but it just isn't particularly easy to configure it to do so.

Do they ramdonly make up an identity or you're going to have to change it
yourself?

karim

 

[karim]

Have you actually read this thread? Yes? Then surely you know why ua
strings are forged, and that your comment is silly.

You are the one doing the forging. It's not the browser's fault that you go
in and force it to lie. Guns don't kill people, people do.

karim

 

[karim]

Fine, among others:

Opera (*defaults* to identifying as IE, can identify as Opera or various
Netscapes)

Konqueror (can identify as just about anything, including
various IEs, plugins available to make this easy)

Mozilla (can identify as just about anything, probably Netscape 6+ can
therefore be made to do the same, plugins available to make this easy)

IBM Home Page Reader (uses IE to get the page, so appears to be IE,
but its parsing and display is completely different) - similar
comments apply to other screen readers.

w3m (Freeform text entry available for UA, defaults to w3m)

wget (Freeform text entry available for UA, defaults to wget)

links (Freeform text entry available for UA, defaults to Links)

That's just the ones I can think of in a minute or so.

Also, any browser (including IE) can be put behind a proxy that will
rewrite the UA string to be an arbitrary string (including something
that appears to be IE)

I haven't looked at what various browsers indentify themselves as in their
*default* installation but I am sure if you look at the whole UA, there's
enough characters that can give you enough information about the browser's
identity. If I want to know if your browser is Opera, somewhere in the ua
it should have 'opera'.

The fact that you go in and change the ua yourself of course will cause the
website you visit think you're some other browser. I still question why you
would do this if you use one of the known browsers that obey html
standards. If you're using an html feature or some Javascript that doesn't
break properly in all the top 5-10 browsers, perhaps you should use a
workaround that does work. Instead of doing extensive browser sniffing, I
will use modern version 5+ features. I will also put a display to advice
the visitor to upgrade. If enough sites do this, the person will hopefully
upgrade. It's painful to build sites that satisfy all browsers.

Karim

 

[Bertilo Wennergren]

The fact that you go in and change the ua yourself of course will cause the
website you visit think you're some other browser. I still question why you
would do this if you use one of the known browsers that obey html
standards.

Because the pages don't obey html standards?

 

[GreyWyvern]

I haven't looked at what various browsers indentify themselves as in
their
*default* installation but I am sure if you look at the whole UA, there's
enough characters that can give you enough information about the
browser's
identity. If I want to know if your browser is Opera, somewhere in the ua
it should have 'opera'.

It *does*.

Every Opera UA string contains the word "Opera", usually added to the
end. Even when spoofing, you can tell it's an Opera UA visiting, just by
searching for "Opera". Opera can obsfucate the UA string, but it does not
lie.

Grey

 

[Goran Larsson]

I haven't looked at what various browsers indentify themselves as in their
*default* installation but I am sure if you look at the whole UA, there's
enough characters that can give you enough information about the browser's
identity. If I want to know if your browser is Opera, somewhere in the ua
it should have 'opera'.

If I want to know if your browser is Moxilla, somewhere in the ua it
should have 'Mozilla'. True or False? False. The default User-Agent
from MSIE includes 'Mozilla'.

If I want to know if your browser is MSIE, somewhere in the ua it
should have 'MSIE'. True or False? False. The default User-Agent
from Opera includes 'MSIE'.

If I want to know if your browser is Opera, somewhere in the ua it
should have 'Opera'. True or False? False. The default User-Agent
from Loki includes 'Opera'.

If I want to know if your browser is Loki, somewhere in the ua it
should have 'Loki'. True or False? False. The default User-Agent
from Yaqui includes 'Loki'.

If I want to know if your browser is Yaqui, ...