60392 - RFE- add visible preference for Netscape6 emulation

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 46029

(SeaMonkey :: General, enhancement, P3)

Description

[adam]

RFE- I would request that the hidden pref browser.useragent.override (?) be
exposed in the prefs panel.
This would create a check box "Identify Browser as Netscape 6"

The reasons for this are the widely divergent browser sniffing implementations
across the web.

I encountered problems with this at Netscape's own Theme Park for Netscape 6.
I also found this to be a problem at macromedia in trying to download the flash
plugin.
I anticipate that this will be a continual and frustrating problem for all users
of the Mozilla browser.
While many websites will make the transition to identifying Netscape 6
correctly, Netscape's failure to correctly identify the small but vital Mozilla
community is indicative of future errors for other web sites.

The hidden pref is inadequate as a solution as this is not obvious nor easily
accessible to the USERS of Mozilla.

Comment 1

[Asa Dotzler [:asa]]

ugh. I don't think this belongs in the UI.  Most users wouldn't know what it
means and the ones that do know what it means can easily switch it in the prefs.js

Comment 2

[adam]

Asa- You could say the same thing about many of the other prefs under Advanced 
in Preferences.

This is likely to be a significant problem that will cause numerous bug reports 
and confusion in web developers and users. The official response should not 
be "edit the registry" (or the text file as the case may be). A simple checkbox 
in the Advanced section is more appropriate.

Comment 3

[Warner Young]

Certainly, putting it under the Advanced prefs seems reasonable.  Most end-users
shouldn't be mucking with Advanced settings anyway, unless they know what
they're doing.

Comment 4

[Asa Dotzler [:asa]]

not my area of expertise. over to design feeback

Comment 5

[Matthew T (active 1999-2002)]

Sticking such a pref in the Advanced category assumes that we have an Advanced 
prefs category at all in the future. And pretending to be Netscape 6 would mean 
that Mozilla would occasionally get fed dumbed-down style sheets (those which 
didn't use fixed positioning, which isn't in Netscape 6).

On the other hand, iCab has this in its prefs dialog:

+-Browser Identity----------------------------------------------+
|                                                               |
| ( ) iCab/Pre 2.2 (Macintosh; I; PPC)                          |
| ( ) Lynx/2.8 (compatible; iCab Pre2.2; Macintosh; I; PPC)     |
| (*) Mozilla/4.5 (compatible; iCab Pre2.2; Macintosh; I; PPC)  |
| ( ) [                                                       ] |
+---------------------------------------------------------------+

And giving the option to pretend to be, say, Internet Explorer could be useful in 
the future if the browser wars (or OS wars, for that matter) get messy.

Ian, thoughts?

Comment 6

[Hixie (not reading bugmail)]

As a web author I think it would be a disaster for the user agent string to
suddenly become massively unreliable. I _personally_ think that the hidden
pref is plenty enough for the times where this might be needed.

I would propose WONTFIX; however I see why from a user point a view one would
want this. Maybe the user controllable side of things should only be able to
affect certain parts of the UA string? e.g. the Gecko/XXXXXXXXXX string should
always be correct, but the suffix (Netscape6/6.0 or whatever) should be 
editable? So long as it is still possible for sites to recognise what the heck
they are dealing with... ;-)

Comment 7

[Matthew T (active 1999-2002)]

No, if this pref isn't able to *completely* obscure the browser's true identity 
(and thus prevent Web site lockout), then I don't think it would be much use.

Comment 8

[Zach Lipton [:zach]]

Chaning the qa contact on these bugs to me. MPT will be moving to the 
owner of this component shortly. I would like to thank him for all his hard 
work as he moves roles in mozilla.org...Yada, Yada, Yada...

Comment 9

[Asa Dotzler [:asa]]

updating to new owner. sorry for the spam.

Comment 10

[Blake Ross]

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 46029 ***