Comments on: Why Opera 10’s User Agent Smells Bad

By: Craig Buckler

Craig Buckler — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 14:39:57 +0000

@Pacoup
That’s true, but who will users blame? The website (which works fine in IE) or the browser? As David Storey indicated, many IIS/ASP.NET sites and the Bank of America were affected. I don’t think they’d have worried if it were just a few dodgy blogs.

We all know browser sniffing is dumb but, like it or not, many developers have resorted to doing it. Opera’s solution may be quick and dirty, but it won’t break major websites.

By: Pacoup

Pacoup — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 14:25:58 +0000

This just makes it ok for people to use stupid browser sniffing techniques that don’t work, yet alone using browser sniffing to limit users at all.

By: NetHawk

NetHawk — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 05:12:38 +0000

I’ve encountered problems with IE8. Some sites claim this is an outdated browser. If you look at the code, you see that the developer didn’t believe in any IE beyond 7 doing things like

if not IE7 then show Message

When will (amateur) browser sniffing come to an end (sigh)…

By: lorenw

lorenw — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 16:41:23 +0000

I think a big problem is that when a coder builds a website, they use browser sniffing to make it look right.

The poor client who relies on the website has no idea that browser sniffing is being used and do not realize they are loosing visitors.

By: Mark

Mark — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 14:38:09 +0000

This is all they really could have done.

PS. Many people seem to miss the fact the REAL version number is appended to the end..

“Opera/9.80 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X; U; en) Presto/2.2.15 Version/10.00 “

That will continue to increment, so properly maintained browser sniffing code can use that, broken detection code will get 9.8. Opera also mention this is only temporary and when IE reaches 10, and webmasters are forced to fix broken sites, Opera can remove it’s workaround.

By: Debiprasad

Debiprasad — Sat, 30 May 2009 12:39:34 +0000

What I guess is, they have done this for a short time and this is a buzz for the developers who sniff their website for browsers. In the meanwhile, those developers will modify their code, so that their site will not break, when Opera revert to their original User Agent string.

By: Dave

Dave — Fri, 29 May 2009 21:52:22 +0000

This sounds like the same kind of garbage that tries to force me to use Firefox to get the content of a site, claiming to be incompatible with my browser. In those cases, I show them I’m incompatible with their site and go find it somewhere else.

By: David Storey

David Storey — Fri, 29 May 2009 20:09:06 +0000

We couldn’t use any alpha characters in the UA string as that breaks sites too. One of the biggest reasons why we did this is because it effects ASP.net/IIS sites, meaning potentially many thousands of sites are broken by the Opera 10 UA string. These range from AJAX not working, large parts of the code being missing, or being out right blocked. Major sites like Bank of America were also effected.

By: Craig Buckler

Craig Buckler — Fri, 29 May 2009 18:35:13 +0000

I like that Opera/a10 idea – very neat. Although I suspect several sites will still break because they’ll attempt to do mathematics on an ‘a’.

For the moment, it appears Opera will simply append “Version/1X.00″ to the end of the user agent. It might be a short-term fix, but I’ve a feeling it might be a long-term solution.

By: Joe544

Joe544 — Fri, 29 May 2009 18:06:30 +0000

I wonder what would have happened if they changed the way the whole thing worked, instead of settling for 9.80 gone for something like:

Opera/a10.00 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X; U; en) Presto/2.2.0

or just spell Opera lower case? I mean, in reality, this is just a temporary fix, what happens with Opera 11? V 9.90….. then Opera 12??

The problem is always going to be there, this is just a quick fix at the end of the day.