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Opera to Stop Spoofing User Agent as IE

Posted by timothy on from the bold-new-world dept.

Anonymous reader writes "The Opera browser will stop spoofing its User Agent (UA) as Internet Explorer. Currently Opera, by default, spoofs its UA to identify itself as Internet Explorer. This is seen, by some, as a move that will bring up Opera's usage stats a bit higher, and will hopefully make webmasters, who develop IE centric sites, more aware of Opera."

15 of 360 comments (clear)

  1. Screwed both ways by intmainvoid · · Score: 2, Insightful

    They're dammed if they do (users getting blocked from sites they would otherwise be perfectly able to access with Opera) and dammed if they don't (on the usage stats).

    Can't they just stick the word "Opera" somewhere in the user agent string, but still make like they're IE?

    --
    Drag n' Drop DVD Recommendations
    1. Re:Screwed both ways by dougmc · · Score: 4, Insightful
      and dammed if they don't (on the usage stats).
      Of course, this assumes that it actually matters how many people use Opera, and that they be accurately counted. I suspect that it only matters for bragging rights, but I'm sure that others will say that `if enough people use Opera, we'll support it'. (Except that if they did their site correctly, it would work on any browser already.)

      Opera (the company) has always whined that they weren't being properly counted because of they defaulted to pretending to be IE, so it'll be good to finally remove this whine. (Of course, they can still whine about it, as they'll say it's people using older versions, or people who have changed it manually, so maybe nothing will change.)

    2. Re:Screwed both ways by VoidWraith · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Actually, if they did their site correctly, it would work in everything but IE.

    3. Re:Screwed both ways by letxa2000 · · Score: 2, Insightful
      If I remember correctly, I couldn't even properly search for hotels in Expedia.com under Opera even under the IE setting. So I said, thank you, I'll take my business elsewhere. So I searched for hotels on Yahoo, found the one I wanted, and then booked directly with the hotel chain online and got a better price anyway.

      The best one yet (can't remember where) was a site that told me that I couldn't use my browser. There was a contact link so I clicked that to complain--and got yet another message saying my browser wasn't going to cut it. I couldn't even contact them thanks to some idiot web developers. I was going to look up contact information in their whois record and call and bitch but I decided I had already wasted enough time on those clowns. I don't remember what site that was, but I went to another site that had no problems with my browser and did business with them.

      Companies and web developers that continue to do IE-only developer are slowly going to become obsolete. This kind of IE-only nonsense was never acceptable but they could get away with it when 95%+ of the people were using IE. That's changing more and more every day and companies are going to look less and less fondly of their own website that's throwing away 10% of their potential profits, and that percentage is growing daily!

      NOTE TO TROLLS: Don't tell me a company isn't going to care about 10% of profits. If you have stock in a company that doesn't care about 10% profits, sell your stock, because it's probably going to go down soon. Companies might not develop Linux applications for a 10% market due to the R&D cost, but something like a web page that has no excuse for not handling everyone is a completely different story.

  2. A better idea... by mendaliv · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I would think a better way to combat the "sites that target opera users" problem would be to have a big button next to "refresh" that says "if the page looks weird click here!"

    In that case, the page would refresh and the browser would lie to the webserver about what browser it is for the remainder of that session on that domain.

    Best of luck to Opera though. Hopefully there aren't so many sites that will screw the browser over.

  3. Not likely by NutscrapeSucks · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Our stats package can supposedly detect Opera's spoofed UA, and I'm still seeing numbers like 0.2%.

    Despite my username, right now IE5/Macintosh is the bane of my existance as it is still over the magic 1.0% line.

    --
    Whenever I hear the word 'Innovation', I reach for my pistol.
  4. Er by shreevatsa · · Score: 3, Insightful

    This is seen, by some, as a move that will bring up Opera's usage stats a bit higher
    Bring up the usage stats, or maybe, thanks to the websites that don't even serve you if you're not using IE, bring down the usage itself? (Hopefully not the latter!)


    ...will hopefully make webmasters, who develop IE centric sites, more aware of Opera.
    More aware of the standards, you mean.
    Anyway, Opera has much fewer users than Firefox, so I think any difference that Opera makes will be much less than what Firefox would.... still, it's a good thing; I wonder if Opera users weren't ashamed all this while to be identified as IE users? :P

  5. Whining? by hkmwbz · · Score: 5, Insightful
    "Opera (the company) has always whined that they weren't being properly counted because of they defaulted to pretending to be IE, so it'll be good to finally remove this whine. (Of course, they can still whine about it, as they'll say it's people using older versions, or people who have changed it manually, so maybe nothing will change.)"
    I don't get it.

    In what way is pointing out the fact that sites often fail to detect Opera because it spoofs as IE by default whining?

    What do you mean by "whining" anyway?

    Is it whining if your browser is being discriminated against, and you make a point of that? Were the black slaves in the US "whining" when they wanted freedom? Were those who wanted to abolish slavery "whining"? Yeah, I'm purposedly exaggerating slightly, but surely you get my point.

    I don't get the hostility towards Opera. The company pays several people to work with web standards in the W3C. The guy who invented CSS works for the company. Even as tiny as Opera is it has still defined what a modern browser is supposed to do. A lot of the "innovations" in Firefox and IE7 were introduced by Opera. Heck, the company even officially opposes software patents, so it's not even trying to prevent free software from just doing whatever Opera can do (or at least trying). Stuff Mozilla representatives are bragging about in Minimo, such as Small Screen Rendering, spatial navigation, and other things Minimo is supposedly going to revolutionize the mobile browser market with, were invented by Opera, and have been available to users of mobile phones with Opera on them for ages.

    Why the constant derogatory comments about Opera on Slashdot? I mean, the first paragraph you wrote was informative, but then you just had to add that second paragraph to make sure that you showed everyone how you really think Opera is lame, "so please don't mod me down for saying something remotely positive about Opera"?

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    1. Re:Whining? by dougmc · · Score: 2, Insightful
      In what way is pointing out the fact that sites often fail to detect Opera because it spoofs as IE by default whining?
      Opera (the company) and Opera users have often claimed that the numbers of Opera users were being drastically under-reported because of this spoofing.

      And often it took the form of whining ... `This report is so unfair to Opera users ... there's so many more of us than your web server logs show, etc.'

      Is it whining if your browser is being discriminated against, and you make a point of that?
      It's whining when every time soembody attempts to count how popular each browser is, somebody has to point out how innaccurate it is because `it doesnt' count Opera users properly.' If the Opera developers wanted Opera to be counted properly, it wouldn't spoof it's user agent by default. Mozilla doesn't, Firefox doesn't, Netscape doesn't, IE doesn't ...

      Surely they were aware of the risk of not being counted properly when they made the decision to spoof their User agent. It was their decision, and they knew what they were doing. They need to live with the (minor, imho) consequences, or fix it (as they're finally doing, good for them.)

      And as for the users, if they feel that it's important that Opera be counted properly, the first thing they need to do is make sure their own personal installations report their User agents correctly.

      Were the black slaves in the US "whining" when they wanted freedom? Were those who wanted to abolish slavery "whining"? Yeah, I'm purposedly exaggerating slightly, but surely you get my point.
      No, I don't get your point. Are Opera users slaves or something? What does any of this have to do with slavery?

      All I'm talking about is if Opera makes up 0.2% of the browser market, or some higher percentage. To try and compare that to slavery, well, makes it look like slavery was/is a trivial issue.

      Why the constant derogatory comments about Opera on Slashdot?
      If you're asking me, you're asking the wrong person. I said nothing about Opera the browser. My comments were about Opera the company and Opera users, and probably only a small (but vocal) minority of those.
      but then you just had to add that second paragraph to make sure that you showed everyone how you really think Opera is lame
      I said no such thing. Your English comprehension skills may be lame, but I said no such thing about the Opera browser.
    2. Re:Whining? by masklinn · · Score: 2, Insightful
      If the Opera developers wanted Opera to be counted properly, it wouldn't spoof it's user agent by default. {snip} IE doesn't
      Wrong, the "Mozilla/4.0" at the beginning of the IE UA is nothing more than spoofing Netscape's old UAS, and adding (compatible, mybrowsername) doesn't make it any better.
      The Mozilla Foundation is the only one supposed to use the "Mozilla/x.y" UAS, anyone else using it is spoofing, case closed.
      --
      "The way we can tell it's C# instead of Haskell is because it's nine lines instead of two." -- wadler
  6. Forget granny. Different people - different needs. by hkmwbz · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Maybe Firefox or IE aren't "just as good" for everyone. Maybe people have different needs. Maybe some people just want a small, fast, feature-rich browser which is secure, and which doesn't require tons of confusing extensions to do various things.

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    Clever signature text goes here.
  7. Re:Good by hkmwbz · · Score: 2, Insightful
    "Opera is a great browser for both speed and standards. However it lacks simplicity and is /too/ rich a browser."
    Have you actually tried Opera 8? It's got "everything" disabled by default and stuff doesn't appear unless you start using it. The "Opera is too complicated" argument doesn't work anymore.
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  8. we need a new borg icon by maxpublic · · Score: 2, Insightful

    We need a new borg icon for the Firefox fanboys. Just like the Billy-G worshippers, any time anyone mentions the virtues of a non-Firefox browser they shit their pants, whip out their willies, and start jacking off at the altar of free software.

    I've said it before and I'll say it again: ANY monoculture is a bad monoculture. It doesn't matter what the dominate monoculture is, it's always a bad thing to have a market overwhelmed by a single product. If the fanboys had any brains at all they'd welcome every non-IE browser into the market and encourage the whole passle to compete against one another, rather than blasting everything that might take market share from their precious One True Browswer(TM).

    I sincerely hope that Opera and Firefox continue to take IE down a peg. I also sincerely hope that neither Opera nor Firefox ever reaches a dominant market position. It's better for everyone involved if the market for browsers remains in contention among as many products as possible.

    Well, better for everyone except the fanatics, of course. But it's about time we stopped listening to their ilk anyway.

    Max

    --
    My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
  9. Re:Good by interiot · · Score: 2, Insightful
    Great, it's the return of excessive capital-and-symbol anonymous man! I'm thrilled. Again, please post as a logged-in user.

    Look, the difference between Opera and Mozilla is pretty simple. Ready?

    Opera = Vi. Mozilla = Emacs. Got it?

    Opera = small download, very small memory footprint, a lot of attention paid to making it fast.

    Mozilla = as intelligently designed as Opera, but with a different philosophy. Make it flexible as hell by adding a powerful extension language (emacs gets lisp, mozilla gets javascript). Everybody adds interpretted code to it, and eventually it becomes a mail reader, web browser, operating system, and kitchen sink...

    So it's really different strokes for different folks. You like minimalism, and have a growing collection of 80's-era hardware? Use Opera. You like lots of features, and maybe enjoy hacking bits of your favorate app-becomes-OS? Use Mozilla.

    (yes, I'm aware that vim can now emulate emacs lisp code, which is definitely a perversion of its original principles. And Opera's no slouch on features. Nevertheless, there's still a difference in original philosophies... Opera won't implement anything that's not light and fast. And Mozilla actively WANTS to have a third of its default functionality implemented in javascript)
  10. Re:In Two Minds by myov · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The Mozilla/5.0 string should also go. After all, every browser is pretending to be Netscape, and it's become redundant now.

    What the string should should indicate is what version of the various standards it supports. Something along the lines of:
    HTML/4.0 CSS/2 PDF JPEG PNG etc.

    Don't support CSS? You get the table layout. Don't support HTML 3? You get an upgrade message. Etc.

    The string itself would need to be enforced by the W3C so we can't get something like MS's "we'll impliment what we want or make our own standard" attitude. Supporting CSS 2 means you support the spec entirely, and it's no indication that the browser is IE, Firefox or anything else, which means you can't code to one browser.

    --
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