Valid Navigator.AppName values

[ima]

Where can I find a list of valid names for Navigator.AppName?

 

[Randy Webb]

ima said the following on 9/1/2005 5:56 PM:

Where can I find a list of valid names for Navigator.AppName?

You are not going to find a complete list of potential names that can
appear in navigator.appName (Case Matters).

My IE6, with this snippet:

alert(navigator.appName)

gives me this:

My Damn Browser

And I doubt you are going to find that in any list of potential "valid
names" for navigator.appName.
And with the situation on the web of appName spoofing, that list can't
be created unless you create a list of all potential combinations of
alphanumeric characters up to, oh, say 50 characters. Which puts that
list at approximately 1.453665622146772e+81 possible entries.

Why are you after the appName though?

 

[Lee]

ima said:

Where can I find a list of valid names for Navigator.AppName?

You can't.
That's like asking for a list of valid user names.

 

[Gérard Talbot]

ima wrote :

Where can I find a list of valid names for Navigator.AppName?

Using Web Standards in Your Web Pages
Developing Cross Browser/Cross Platform Pages:
Browser identification approach (aka "browser sniffing"): not best, not
reliable approach

"major problem with this approach is that the browser identity can be
'spoofed' because, in many modern browsers, the navigator.appVersion
(and navigator.appName) and navigator.userAgent string properties are
user configurable strings.
A user or browser distributor can put what they want in the
navigator.userAgent string"

http://www.mozilla.org/docs/web-developer/upgrade_2.html#DevCrossBrowser

Instead use object/feature detection support for cross-browser code as
explained:

Using Object/Feature detection approach: best and overall most reliable
http://www.mozilla.org/docs/web-developer/upgrade_2.html#ObjectFeatDetect

A Strategy That Works: Object/Feature Detecting by comp.lang.javascript
newsgroup FAQ notes
http://jibbering.com/faq/faq_notes/not_browser_detect.html#bdFD

Browser detection - No; Object detection - Yes by Peter-Paul Koch
http://www.quirksmode.org/js/support.html

Gérard

 

[Randy Webb]

Martin Kurz said the following on 9/1/2005 6:29 PM:

Well, I know these three:

* Netscape
* Opera
* Microsoft Internet Explorer

But what these strings do say about the used browser? Nothing at all. If there's
"Microsoft Internet Explorer" as Navigator.AppName - well then it can be any
browser, maybe really an IE, maybe a firefox, maybe an opera, maybe something
else. Netscape? Can be allmost any browser and opera either - and the same for
every other name too. Navigator.AppName is just a string without any usefull
information in it.

If you intend to detect the used browser, you have to check for the differences
in JS-Implementation.

That won't tell the "used browser", it will tell you what
objects/methods the browser supports, but not what the browser is.

 

[Danny@Kendal]

Where can I find a list of valid names for Navigator.AppName?

Try Googling for "user agent strings".

 

[Randy Webb]

Danny@Kendal said the following on 9/2/2005 4:47 AM:

Try Googling for "user agent strings".

That won't give you the strings that are contained in the appName, it
will give you discussions and possible string that are in the
navigator.userAgent string.

 

[Danny@Kendal]

Danny@Kendal said the following on 9/2/2005 4:47 AM:

That won't give you the strings that are contained in the appName, it will
give you discussions and possible string that are in the
navigator.userAgent string.

Doh! Maybe I should have Googled for navigator.appName first.

 

[ima]

OK... OK... Point taken. I'm not a professional and I've forgotten
the vast majority of javascript that I managed to learn about 10 years
ago. Now, it seems that I'm the most qualified of a small
organization to handle our web site. My intention to use
Navigator.AppName was simply to redirect newer browsers to a cleaner
set of pages (that use css) . I found a "free to use" copy and past
script to do that but I didn't know the Navigator.AppName values to
check for other than "Microsoft Internet Explorer" and "Netscape". I
could guess but I would never know if I guessed correctly or not.

If anyone here knows of another, more reliable script to redirect the
newer browsers to the css pages, I'd love to hear all about it.

 

[Randy Webb]

ima said the following on 9/2/2005 11:57 AM:

OK... OK... Point taken. I'm not a professional and I've forgotten
the vast majority of javascript that I managed to learn about 10 years
ago. Now, it seems that I'm the most qualified of a small
organization to handle our web site. My intention to use
Navigator.AppName was simply to redirect newer browsers to a cleaner
set of pages (that use css) . I found a "free to use" copy and past
script to do that but I didn't know the Navigator.AppName values to
check for other than "Microsoft Internet Explorer" and "Netscape". I
could guess but I would never know if I guessed correctly or not.

If anyone here knows of another, more reliable script to redirect the
newer browsers to the css pages, I'd love to hear all about it.

You start by quoting what you are replying to.

Then, you go to comp.infosystems.www.authoring.stylesheets and ask about
making your CSS degrade in the absence of CSS support.

But, if the criteria is "CSS Support", then you test for just that, CSS
Support.

Question:

User has CSS disabled in IE6. What page do they get?

 

[Gérard Talbot]

ima wrote :

OK... OK... Point taken. I'm not a professional and I've forgotten
the vast majority of javascript that I managed to learn about 10 years
ago. Now, it seems that I'm the most qualified of a small
organization to handle our web site. My intention to use
Navigator.AppName was simply to redirect newer browsers to a cleaner
set of pages (that use css) .

Site branching is not what I would recommend. Site branching involves
considerably more time, efforts, energy, testing, finances, etc.. to
develop, maintain and is not what a very wide majority of professional
web developers do or would recommend. What they use mostly is what is
referred as graceful degradation of pages for user agents which do not
support well certain CSS properties or simply do not support CSS. Your
webpages should look reasonably (as best as they can with valid markup
code) well in older user agents or in user agents not supporting CSS
(like text browsers, screen readers). Graceful degradation and
accessibility guidelines, priorities underline the importance that
content should be accessible for any web-aware software and that
navigation (links) should be functional.

I found a "free to use" copy and past

script to do that but I didn't know the Navigator.AppName values to
check for other than "Microsoft Internet Explorer" and "Netscape". I
could guess but I would never know if I guessed correctly or not.

If anyone here knows of another, more reliable script to redirect the
newer browsers to the css pages, I'd love to hear all about it.

ima, what I replied to you is among the best possible resources
available addressing your issue. I can not find anything better than
what I posted and I doubt anyone could.

CSS1 is widely supported; about 98% of all user agents on use on the web
support reasonably well more than 50% of CSS1 properties. With time,
these percentage increase. What's important for you is to start reading
good references and FAQ on web authoring. But there is a wide consensus
among web authors that
1- user agent string detection (aka browser sniffing) is bad,
unreliable, often wrong, a nightmare to update and maintain
2- object/feature detection is better, more reliable, etc..
I'm merely mentioning what is in the FAQ of this newsgroup:
A Strategy That Works: Object/Feature Detecting by comp.lang.javascript
newsgroup FAQ notes
http://jibbering.com/faq/faq_notes/not_browser_detect.html#bdFD

Gérard

 

[Gérard Talbot]

Randy Webb wrote :

Question:

User has CSS disabled in IE6. What page do they get?

Just curious. How can an user disable CSS? Is there a simple button or
setting that does that??
Thanks.

Gérard

 

[Randy Webb]

Gérard Talbot said the following on 9/3/2005 8:02 PM:

Randy Webb wrote :



Just curious. How can an user disable CSS? Is there a simple button or
setting that does that??
Thanks.

Tools>Internet Options>Accessibility

Ignore colors specified on Web pages
Ignore font styles specified on Web pages
Ignore font sizes specified on Web pages

And you can go even further and "Format documents using my style sheet"
and write your own CSS file to format documents the way they suit you best.

And that is just in IE6. Most (if not all) modern browsers give the user
control over how a web page displays in a browser.