334756 - make UA string (user agent) for trunk releases not say Firefox

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Firefox Build System :: General, defect, P2)

Description

[David Baron :dbaron: (⌚️UTC-4, no longer working on Mozilla)]

It's been suggested that releases not branded as Firefox shouldn't say Firefox in the UA string.  See http://groups.google.com/group/mozilla.dev.planning/browse_frm/thread/099399cc15401d8e/8bd055de53133707#8bd055de53133707

Comment 1

[David Baron :dbaron: (⌚️UTC-4, no longer working on Mozilla)]

Attachment: use all the alphabetic characters of MOZ_APP_DISPLAYNAME instead

Comment 2

[Darin Fisher]

Comment on attachment 219082 [details] [diff] [review]
use all the alphabetic characters of MOZ_APP_DISPLAYNAME instead

Nice!

Comment 3

[Mike Beltzner [:beltzner, not reading bugmail]]

In terms of making things easier to understand for people using our products, I'm *all* for this.

Comment 4

[David Baron :dbaron: (⌚️UTC-4, no longer working on Mozilla)]

I'm also for this in that it reduces the danger of Web authors sniffing for Firefox when they should be sniffing for Gecko, since it will lower the high percentage of Gecko UAs that are Firefox (especially among testers / early adopters).

Comment 5

[David Baron :dbaron: (⌚️UTC-4, no longer working on Mozilla)]

Checked in to trunk.

Comment 6

[David Baron :dbaron: (⌚️UTC-4, no longer working on Mozilla)]

Checked in to MOZILLA_1_8_BRANCH.

Comment 7

[Jesse Ruderman]

Benefits of the change:
* Fewer people yelling "Look, a Firefox 3 alpha!" on Digg every time a tinderbox uploads an hourly build.
* Fewer sites broken in Camino, Seamonkey, etc.

Drawbacks of the change:
* Fewer people yelling "Look, a Firefox 3 alpha!" might mean fewer trunk testers.
* Gecko trunk nightlies and alphas gets less testing because major sites being broken prevents testers from using those builds for daily browsing.

Comment 8

[Bill Gianopoulos [:WG9s]]

(In reply to comment #7)
> Drawbacks of the change:

You missed one:

  * All those sites that are reporting usage by browser will now report lower percentages for Firefox.

Not sure this is a good thing from a markting perspective.

Comment 9

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

You missed a benefit:

  * Better support for Gecko on websites.

So for example if we ship a mobile browser (say Minimo), it'll work "out of the box".

Comment 10

[Daniel Veditz [:dveditz]]

>   * All those sites that are reporting usage by browser will now report lower
>     percentages for Firefox.

Negligible. Nightly users number maybe ten thousand if we're generous, actual users in the 10's of millions. It's not going to move the needle any.

Comment 11

[Uri Bernstein]

Bug 338306 is an example of a site (aircanada.com) sniffing for "Firefox", and, as a result, breaking on trunk builds since this was fixed.

Would it be useful to mark such bugs as depending on this one (or vice versa)?

Comment 12

[:Gavin Sharp [email: [e-mail]]]

(In reply to comment #11)
> Would it be useful to mark such bugs as depending on this one (or vice versa)?

No, they should block bug 334967 :)

Comment 13

[Daniel C]

For reference, bug 588874 changed the UA back to say Firefox instead of Minefield.