Thomas Pamin wrote:
What is currently the best agent.override string to use to get into most sites without complaints about SM being out-of-date?
Reading between the lines, it looks like you're wanting a one-time set-and-forget setting that's set globally. You can do that by going to about:config and setting general.useragent.override, and for that, I suggest using the stock UA for Firefox 78 ESR:
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:78.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/78.0
This shows that you're using a 64-bit version of Windows 10, but if you're using something else, I don't think it really matters. If you spoof the ESR version of Firefox (i.e. 78) , that should be adequate for most sites. If you use the most current version of Firefox, then you'll need to update each time Firefox does a new version.
However, there is nuance, and a few trade-offs, because how sites handle thing varies by site. Consider:
1) If you do a global setting, then that applies to everything, including the mail client, if you use that. The result is that your email messages show whatever you're spoofing, via the User-Agent: header. It may not make any practical difference, but in the Grand Scheme of Things, it is odd if an email message shows that it was composed/sent with Firefox, rather than a mail client.
2) As a general thing, I want sites to know that I'm using Seamonkey (via what turns up in their logs), and where they're fine if I'm showing an acceptable version of Firefox. Thus, by using site-specific settings via general.useragent.override.[example.com], I use:
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:68.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/68.0 SeaMonkey/2.53.5
There are sites that are beginning to complain about Firefox versions earlier than 78.0, and if I need, I can change 68.0 to 78.0. Using this construct, I can spoof the sites that need it, without doing it globally (including not touching my email).
3) For www.google.com, I've found that when I'm using the normal Seamonkey UA, there's a display quirk, where google's search bar causes the cursor to display about half above the bottom of the search bar. The way around that is to set general.useragent.override.google.com to standard Firefox (without indication of Seamonkey), as noted above. The effect of the quirk is minor, but it's nice to know that there's an easy workaround. My impression is that there's other Google-related pages that don't like a Seamonkey UA (and where it's useful to do similar spoofing) but I don't use Google services often enough that I have any first-hand experience to know which they are.
4) I have seen evidence of sites not working with current versions of Seamonkey, regardless of what kind of spoofing you do. A couple of months back, there was discussion of rottentomatoes.com, and in the context, I did check there, and found problems that I couldn't bypass with spoofing. Apparently, they really do use some feature that's been added to more recent versions of Firefox.
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