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I'd be curious if you were commercially successful. The shift from IE to chrome was told by user agent strings. Almost EVERY web developer was tracking this an

I'd be curious if you were commercially successful. The shift from IE to chrome was told by user agent strings. Almost EVERY web developer was tracking this and figuring out what features would work reasonably and what would not during this shift for the websites they maintained. In other words, what parts of the standard HTML were widely supported among users visiting their sites. If you worked internationally you'll know that this was very different on a country by country basis. Surprised to hear the claims that only a few do this. It is CRITICAL to developing useful websites -> you need to know what version of HTML to target at a minimum. Screen size, mobile vs desktop all also matter. I'm now realizing why some web devs can charge so much - they might use these tools -> while others don't?

shkkmo 7y ago
I find your tone innapropriate for HN User agent sniffing is a bad idea and fragile. Feature detection and shims work much better. CSS media queries are quite sufficient for screen size and resizing issues. Most importantly, none of this ican be fingerprinting unless you are sending these metrics back to your servers which is IMHO unethical.
- privateSFacct 7y ago
  All these are fingerprinting. Almost all these are routinely logged by almost every web analytic product out there. The posters above, sorry for my tone, are lying when they claim that most websites don't do this and most developers don't. It's actually easy to expose their lies. Just visit some websites and check their tracking approach / tools. Literally, browse some of the top 100 websites, magazines, consumer directed product sites etc. In fact, the items may be logged by literally multiple systems on ONE site - the big players can't seem to pick one set of analytics. For example, a site I run turns out to be much more desktop heavy (84%) and have almost no firefox usage (3.XX). That's much different than the web as a whole (half mobile). It's a boring site - no entertainment, mostly folks slowly learning things. Mobile side is heavy iphone / samsung -> so we make sure we get site testing coverage through those. Knowing this and acting on it does not make me an idiot. "But, no, "most" web devs don't do that. Maybe you do. Maybe the people in your company do. But that is not "most," or even "many." I'd say it's probably not even a plurality." Please folks - form your own opinion - chrome dev tools let's you check out whats going on (or just get an extension) and at the end of the day browsing you can choose to believe me (you are heavily fingerprinted on almost all the sites you use) or these folks upset that I'm calling them out. Here are default mixpanel properties by the way - I picked one product at random. https://help.mixpanel.com/hc/en-us/articles/115004613766-Default-Properties-Collected-by-Mixpanel https://help.mixpanel.com/hc/en-us/articles/115004613766-Def... People are spending literally billions on analytics using this (and much more) in terms of trying to figure out how to make a bit more money.
reaperducer 7y ago
I'd be curious if you were commercially successful. Do you consider being able to support my family for a couple of decades successful?
- privateSFacct 7y ago
  I do for sure.

shkkmo 7y ago

I find your tone innapropriate for HN User agent sniffing is a bad idea and fragile. Feature detection and shims work much better. CSS media queries are quite sufficient for screen size and resizing issues. Most importantly, none of this ican be fingerprinting unless you are sending these metrics back to your servers which is IMHO unethical.

privateSFacct 7y ago
All these are fingerprinting. Almost all these are routinely logged by almost every web analytic product out there. The posters above, sorry for my tone, are lying when they claim that most websites don't do this and most developers don't. It's actually easy to expose their lies. Just visit some websites and check their tracking approach / tools. Literally, browse some of the top 100 websites, magazines, consumer directed product sites etc. In fact, the items may be logged by literally multiple systems on ONE site - the big players can't seem to pick one set of analytics. For example, a site I run turns out to be much more desktop heavy (84%) and have almost no firefox usage (3.XX). That's much different than the web as a whole (half mobile). It's a boring site - no entertainment, mostly folks slowly learning things. Mobile side is heavy iphone / samsung -> so we make sure we get site testing coverage through those. Knowing this and acting on it does not make me an idiot. "But, no, "most" web devs don't do that. Maybe you do. Maybe the people in your company do. But that is not "most," or even "many." I'd say it's probably not even a plurality." Please folks - form your own opinion - chrome dev tools let's you check out whats going on (or just get an extension) and at the end of the day browsing you can choose to believe me (you are heavily fingerprinted on almost all the sites you use) or these folks upset that I'm calling them out. Here are default mixpanel properties by the way - I picked one product at random. https://help.mixpanel.com/hc/en-us/articles/115004613766-Default-Properties-Collected-by-Mixpanel https://help.mixpanel.com/hc/en-us/articles/115004613766-Def... People are spending literally billions on analytics using this (and much more) in terms of trying to figure out how to make a bit more money.

reaperducer 7y ago

I'd be curious if you were commercially successful. Do you consider being able to support my family for a couple of decades successful?

privateSFacct 7y ago
I do for sure.