Not all web browsers have the same capabilities. When dealing with widely different classes of browsers, say mobile versus desktop, sniffing the useragent string is a reasonable way to get information from the client to deal with issues like screen sizes etc. Libraries like WURFL ensure that these days, this is not a suicidal treadmill of work, as long as browsers with known capabilities don't change their useragent strings for no reason*. This creates more work for everyone.
It's certainly nuts to be relying heavily on useragent sniffing for anything as fundamental as delivering text content to desktop browsers these days, but the alternative is javascript or even worse in some cases where one has to build richly interactive content that 1) validates and 2) sings and or dances and 3) looks great. Many times delivering different markup to different browsers is not needed, but occasionally it is. The HTML5 transition especially is a time to be explicit about browser capabilities, unless you don't care about page weight for all of the alternative markup / workarounds / hacks you're going to be delivered, or missing the content you're going to see the fallback version of. Not consistently identifying clients capable of using this new tech is going to keep people from implementing new stuff on the server. Not everyone can upgrade their browsers. If new browsers identify themselves consistently, the server guys can move forward with you without dumping corporate America or that old library computer, or last year's shiny mobile phone. Again 95% of the time, there should be no need to do this, but serving HTML5 or SVG for instance to a mobile browser from 2005 is bad news. Oh, you say we should wrap those nice new elements in javascript to prevent them from displaying to the wrong browsers? Wait, what was the point of plain HTML again? *I certainly understand if this is a legal issue (trademark) or an ideological one (web standards maybe). However, at the moment, whoever is in charge of this part of the ranch is giving the impression of total unaccountability to users as time passes without an explanation or fix. Either tell us to get lost, tell us you don't have time, explain why you want to fix the internet first, etc... Community - Communication = Failure -- Shiretoko user agent string breaks compatibilty with major websites https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/397211 You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu Bugs, which is subscribed to Ubuntu. -- ubuntu-bugs mailing list ubuntu-bugs@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs
