826499 - Add general.useragent.stringmode to about:config with 3 modes (none, default, terse).

Status: UNCONFIRMED

(Firefox :: Settings UI, enhancement)

Description

[Roger Hågensen]

User Agent: Firefox/17.0
Build ID: 20121128204232

Steps to reproduce:

In about:config one can add a general.useragent.override string and override the default Firefox useragent string.



Actual results:

While useful it does stay rather static (instead of being "updated" with the browser updates).



Expected results:

I'd rather have this:

(supported values are 0,1,2, unsupported are considered same as 0)
0=Default (how it currently is), same as no general.useragent.stringmode at all.
1=no user agent string (no User-Agent: is sent in HTTP header)
2=Terse (like Firefox/17.0 and nothing else than that), like "User-Agent: Firefox/18.0"

Maybe later a mode 3 or 4 can be added that is only the browser brand, or brand version and OS etc.

This is intended for experimentation and advanced users and possible use by plugins.

No UI changes needed, just a few lines of code in the appropriate place. Where the browser version is fetched for building the UA string before then sending it perhaps?


Interesting thing noticed while "testing" using general.useragent.override set to "Firefox/17.0" (same as if general.useragent.stringmode is set to 2) is that Yahoo fails to identify Firefox and refuses to let the user use the new mail interface.

Being able to test with a terse (minimalistic) UA string is invaluable for advanced users as well as web developers, ideally a site should not depend on the UA to work, but rather test for features and instead handle certain (buggy?) versions of a browser differently. And this options make testing such behavior a lot easier.

Comment 1

[Loic]

I guess the add-on User Agent Switcher is an alternative to your request.
And perhaps the add-on RefControl to select the referer you want to send.