108162 - Browser sniffing is a discredited, flawed approach.

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Documentation Graveyard :: Web Developer, defect)

Description

[Jim Ley]

The page describes how to "sniff browsers", calling it the "ultimate browser 
sniffer" this is despite the fact it only "sniffs" a minority of browsers 4 
(IE, Opera, NN, and HotJava) against 17 others that I know of, which don't 
include Mozilla or IE based variants which also have different UA strings. 
(Amiga-AWeb, Ant Fresco, AvantGo, Bush Int. TV, Dreamcast, Escape, iBrowse, 
iCab, iConnector, Konquerer, NetBox, Omniweb, Oregano, Pogo, QNX Voyager 3, 
Star Office, WebTV) 

The Upgrade document http://www.mozilla.org/docs/web-developer/upgrade_2.html 
has been purged of this flawed technique. (Remember pre Mozilla, the page was 
recommending that you code in mind that future versions of NN would be 
compatible with NN4.) This document also needs changing, it does massive damage 
to the likelyhood of scripts working in Mozilla and browsers based on it.

Jim.

Comment 1

[Henri Sivonen (:hsivonen)]

Gerv marked the page outdated last year. Can we close this as fixed? Or should
the issue of CVS removal be revisited?

Comment 2

[Daniel Wang]

http://www.mozilla.org/docs/web-developer/upgrade_2.html still has information
on layer and browser sniffing. Ian has updated the page several times, so I
suppose he still wants the page? reassign to Ian

Comment 3

[Henri Sivonen (:hsivonen)]

Let's not over-morph bugs. This bug is about
http://www.mozilla.org/docs/web-developer/sniffer/browser_type.html

http://www.mozilla.org/docs/web-developer/upgrade_2.html mentions browser
detection as a flawed approach and advocates object detection.

BTW, I'd prefer saying "This document is obsolete and the information in it
should not be relied upon. The practices described here are not recommended and
this document is provided only for historical reference." instead of "This
document is outdated and the information in it should not be relied upon. It may
no longer represent web authoring best practice." Would that be a strong enough
wording so we can close this bug?

Comment 4

[Ian Oeschger (gone)]

moving stuff over to an outside-the-firewall email for the time being, looking
for people to pick these Help and doc bugs up for me.

Comment 5

[Daniel Wang]

taking over some of Ian's bugs

Comment 6

[James "Kovu" Russell]

I see no reason this bug can't be closed. Anyone object?

Comment 7

[Daniel Wang]

added Henri Sivonen's suggestion -> Henri

Comment 8

[Daniel Wang]

-> fixed :-)