48504 - User-Agent on Windows Me is incorrect

Status: VERIFIED FIXED

(Core :: Networking, defect, P3)

Description

[Frank Faubert]

I recently downloaded a copy of the final version of Windows Me from MSDN and 
checked out what various browsers send for their User-Agents.  Here are the 
results:

IE 5.5 : "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.5; Windows 98; Win 9x 4.90)"
NS 4.74: "Mozilla/4.74 [en] (Win95; U)"
Moz M17: "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Win98; en-US; m17) Gecko/20000807"
Moz M18: "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Win98; en-US; m18) Gecko/20000810"

Mozilla/Netscape should probably use the same platform info that IE is already 
using, as was done with bug #31001.

Comment 1

[Daniel Veditz [:dveditz]]

Confirming to get this onto the radar, but we could probably live with this for 
6.0

Reassigning to ekrock for a marketing guy opinion about how important this is.

Comment 2

[ekrock's old account (dead)]

Is there any other way that a JavaScript script could detect that it was running 
on WinME if we don't fix this?

Agree we should shoot for compatibility with MS IE UAs on WinME if possible. In 
this case I guess that would mean changing "Win98" to "Win9x" in the UA string? 
Someone please propose exactly what they think our UA string should be on WinME. 
Doing this would (a) enable those who wished to distinguish WinME from Win98, 
but (b) not break compatibility with scripts that detect Win32 by looking for 
"win" (case-insensitive).

cc:ing dbaron who's been investigating UA issues and [e-mail] who writes 
logging software.

This should be a trivally easy fix once we define for certain what we'd like the 
UA string to show. Marking helpwanted; would love it if net community member 
would take this on. cc:ing [e-mail] who helped on bug 31001.

For now, marking Future. If we have to, we could live with being unable to 
distinguish between WinME and Win98 for the first release as a known bug. 
Developers should be aware that we will fix this however in a future release so 
they shouldn't depend upon this behavior!

Comment 3

[ekrock's old account (dead)]

Reassigning back to dveditz so it stays on engineering's bug list radar (and 
maybe gets picked up by a mozilla community member) instead of dropping into a 
marketing bug list black hole.

Comment 4

[Frank Faubert]

To be 100% compatible with Microsoft I would propose a UA of:

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows 98; Win 9x 4.90; en-US; m18) Gecko/20000811

However, I personally don't like that it adds an extra field to the UA.  I 
believe the important part is "Win 9x 4.90", so I propose a UA of:

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Win 9x 4.90; en-US; m18) Gecko/20000811

We have updated the development release of our log analysis product to scan for 
"Win 9x 4.90", so it would work with our software either way.

Comment 5

[ekrock's old account (dead)]

I would be fine with using Win 9x 4.90 to represent Windows Me. dbaron, does 
that work with your UA proposal?

Comment 6

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

The UA proposal says "etc." to accomodate future OSes.  This seems like an
awfully strange thing to do, but I won't object...

Comment 7

[Frank Faubert]

Attachment: Patch - Tested on Win95, Win98, WinMe (and Win2000 too).

Comment 8

[Brendan Eich [:brendan]]

I agree with dbaron, it's bletcherous.  But a=[e-mail] -- who will 
help with the cvs commit?

/be

Comment 9

[Gagan]

argh... this is a known dup of one of jud's (?) bugs. I can't seem to find that
right now. 

Comment 10

[Daniel Veditz [:dveditz]]

I can handle the commit

Comment 11

[Daniel Veditz [:dveditz]]

fix checked in

Comment 12

[Tom Everingham]

verified:

User-Agents for win ME,Win NT, and win 98

User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Win 9x 4.90; en-US; m18) Gecko/20000926 
Netscape6/6.0b3

User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; WinNT4.0; en-US; m18) Gecko/20000926 
Netscape6/6.0b3

User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Win98; en-US; m18) Gecko/20000920 
Netscape6/6.0b3

Comment 13

[Jerry Baker]

Mass removing self from CC list.

Comment 14

[Jerry Baker]

Now I feel sumb because I have to add back. Sorry for the spam.