5 ms·

Are you suggesting unique randomized strings for every user?

by kobayashi 11y ago

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
- debaserab2 11y ago
  I'm sorry, but I still find the user agent string to be incredibly useful despite it's many shortcomings. Not so much for deciding what to serve to a request, but moreso to analyze your audience and figure out from a technical perspective what is feasible and what is not. For example, a recent decision I made was to decide whether or not to rewrite a portion of our application in a javascript framework that did not offer IE8 support. I was able to quickly validate what portion of my userbase I was affecting by looking at user agent strings. Request headers are a fantastic way to capture this little bit of information. Using javascript feature checking depends on a javascript engine successfully loading and parsing whatever scripts I've provided to the client. Request headers are simple plaintext that don't fail in even the most bare bones of situations.
  - fkooman 11y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_enhancement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_enhancement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fault_tolerance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fault_tolerance No need to do browser detection. Just make your site work without JS as well :)
    - jerf 11y ago
      Ten years ago, that may have been valid advice, when "dynamic" mostly meant "server-generated". But if you're creating a website that is heavily JS-based, it does no good to serve 25% of your customers a perfectly-standards-compliant page telling them their JS won't work, so the site can't do its thing. You still need to know what client base you are supporting, no matter what.
jakeogh 11y ago
That would be better, but not per user, per session. Currently I have surf(suckless.org) just pick a common one when I launch a tab (via tabbed): https://github.com/jakeogh/rndagent https://github.com/jakeogh/rndagent
- pdkl95 11y ago
  per-HTTP request Nothing ever guaranteed the user agent header would be consistent or present. Any re-use of a user-agent string adds bits of data that can be used for tracking.
  - nitrogen 11y ago
    While we're at it, we need some solution to tracking based on browser window size. I'm one of the few people I know who doesn't maximize everything, so I'm probably 100% uniquely trackable just by window size.
    - quesera 11y ago
      Window size detection is done with JavaScript. Block it.
      - jakeogh 11y ago
        Disable JS by default. I do, and it makes the web better. Surf/tabbed makes this easy to do per process.
      - JupiterMoon 11y ago
        It can apparently be done with CSS by a determined website.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]

Are you suggesting unique randomized strings for every user?

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

debaserab2 11y ago
I'm sorry, but I still find the user agent string to be incredibly useful despite it's many shortcomings. Not so much for deciding what to serve to a request, but moreso to analyze your audience and figure out from a technical perspective what is feasible and what is not. For example, a recent decision I made was to decide whether or not to rewrite a portion of our application in a javascript framework that did not offer IE8 support. I was able to quickly validate what portion of my userbase I was affecting by looking at user agent strings. Request headers are a fantastic way to capture this little bit of information. Using javascript feature checking depends on a javascript engine successfully loading and parsing whatever scripts I've provided to the client. Request headers are simple plaintext that don't fail in even the most bare bones of situations.
- fkooman 11y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_enhancement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_enhancement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fault_tolerance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fault_tolerance No need to do browser detection. Just make your site work without JS as well :)
  - jerf 11y ago
    Ten years ago, that may have been valid advice, when "dynamic" mostly meant "server-generated". But if you're creating a website that is heavily JS-based, it does no good to serve 25% of your customers a perfectly-standards-compliant page telling them their JS won't work, so the site can't do its thing. You still need to know what client base you are supporting, no matter what.

jakeogh 11y ago

That would be better, but not per user, per session. Currently I have surf(suckless.org) just pick a common one when I launch a tab (via tabbed): https://github.com/jakeogh/rndagent https://github.com/jakeogh/rndagent

pdkl95 11y ago
per-HTTP request Nothing ever guaranteed the user agent header would be consistent or present. Any re-use of a user-agent string adds bits of data that can be used for tracking.
- nitrogen 11y ago
  While we're at it, we need some solution to tracking based on browser window size. I'm one of the few people I know who doesn't maximize everything, so I'm probably 100% uniquely trackable just by window size.
  - quesera 11y ago
    Window size detection is done with JavaScript. Block it.
    - jakeogh 11y ago
      Disable JS by default. I do, and it makes the web better. Surf/tabbed makes this easy to do per process.
    - JupiterMoon 11y ago
      It can apparently be done with CSS by a determined website.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]