Comment 20 for bug 1328183

Revision history for this message
Olivier Tilloy (osomon) wrote :

> now I've just finished fixing the code on my own site to handle "mobi"
> and "like android" tokens correctly

Glad that this discussion helped. However the real positive take-away should be: don’t use the UA string to infer device capabilities at all. There are nowadays enough web APIs to properly detect device capabilities, and on the other hand, if done properly responsive design should ensure that a website renders well on all form factors without the need to discriminate user agents based on their identifiers, only on viewport size.

> * Provide a button or something in the browser to explicitly switch UA
> string (like Sogou does to handle Chinese websites that require IE6
> brokenness)
> * Support an "about:debug" page or similar that allows a custom UA
> string to be typed in
> * Allow the user to edit the override list on their phone (even just a
> text file editable in the terminal would do)

Any of the above three ideas would be doable, although none is currently on the roadmap. Contributions are very welcome, though!

> * Support plugins in the browser that would allow third-party
> developers to fix the problem for you

Not a goal for webbrowser-app, very unlikely to happen ever (or at least in the foreseeable future).