Hi everyone,
After taking all input into account, I have decided that we should drop
the "Tablet" token from Fennec's UA on tablets. This is what Android
browser and Chrome do, and corresponds to option D) of my original
options. So for non-"Mobile" devices, it would be:
Mozilla/5.0 (Android; rv:12.0) Gecko/12.0 Firefox/12.0
We should be aware that we _may_ in the future need to add "Touch" on
Windows 8 Metro only, if developers start detecting it in large numbers
and consequently sites start breaking. We should write up on MDN and
publicise a document of best practices in detecting and using touch
events cross-browser, to try and make that less likely.
It's relevant to note that, according to recent ADI data, Tablet users
make up about 25% of Fennec installs, for a total of about 388,000 ADIs,
so perhaps a million users. (Thanks to Anurag Phadke on the Metrics team
for getting the data for me here.)
To elaborate on some points people may ask about:
- We would therefore use "Mobile" on devices where we thought a mobile
experience should be the default, and the desktop UA where we think a
desktop experience should be the default. At the moment, opinion seems
to be that phones are "Mobile" and tablets from 7" up are not, but we
have the flexibility to change that view later.
- Given the short time this token has been in use, and the small number
of Tablet Fennec users (relative to e.g. desktop), we don't expect
significant compatibility problems. The speed we deploy this change is a
trade-off between "minimising the number of browsers with the old UA"
and "making sure we can detect any compatibility problems". So therefore
the exact timing and train schedule of deployment of the change would be
a matter for the release-drivers.
- For the above reasons (short time, relatively small number of users),
I am not too concerned that large numbers of web developers are going to
have been detecting our "Tablet" string, or that this will lead to
frustration at our "ever-changing" UA.
- This decision is going to be widely publicised so that any necessary
sirens can be set off, to make sure everyone who might be affected is aware.
Lastly, I'd like to apologise for putting "Tablet" in in the first
place. That was my call, and it was a mistake.
Gerv
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