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Browser vendor/version is hugely important information for triaging issues and implementing progressive enhancement approaches on large scale websites.

tyingq 7y ago
Perhaps, but it invalidates most of their stated reasons for doing this. Which makes the post a confusing read.
- marcusarmstrong 7y ago
  IMO it’s explained better in the Client Hints specification.
  - HorstG 7y ago
    Client hints are not any more useful than traditional UA for privacy or progressive enhancement. Its the same content, just split up. Any browser not sending everything will have atrocious permission UX, nagging websites or just get the broken IE5 version. UA hints solve nothing, even after reading the spec
- magicalist 7y ago
  > it invalidates most of their stated reasons The "main advantages" section for client hints all seem to apply there.
minitech 7y ago
Triaging issues, sure. Progressive enhancement? If you’re parsing User-Agent to implement that, you’re doing it wrong. (Feature detection is the correct approach, when necessary.)
- nicoburns 7y ago
  There are cases like IndexedDB bugs in certain versions of Safari that are very hard to feature detect...
- grose 7y ago
  Here's an official Google page telling you to sniff UAs or their new feature will break everything: https://www.chromium.org/updates/same-site/incompatible-clients https://www.chromium.org/updates/same-site/incompatible-clie... Edit: OK, this isn't progressive enhancement. But it's still a major problem you have to sniff the User-Agent for. I don't want to sniff UAs either but when Chrome is wont to change how fundamental parts of the web work like cookies it's sometimes necessary. I know UA hints will still allow you to do this, but requiring a second request is going to make things like redirect pages difficult to implement.
  - minitech 7y ago
    SameSite=None isn’t progressive enhancement.
    - grose 7y ago
      You're right, I should have replied elsewhere. By the way, if anyone knows what this _is_ called I would be interested to know. As far as I can see it's basically feature detection with no other way of detecting it besides the UA.
- marcusarmstrong 7y ago
  Can’t feature detect during SSR, so making an educated guess and falling back gracefully (when possible—many times it just isn’t, as with ES6 syntax) is important to get initial page load right by default.
  - zamadatix 7y ago
    Because so many people abused the user agent header for things that could gracefully fall back (or they just made invalid assumptions from it) it was made an unreliable indicator for times you actually want to send shimmed content on first load.
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tyingq 7y ago

Perhaps, but it invalidates most of their stated reasons for doing this. Which makes the post a confusing read.

marcusarmstrong 7y ago
IMO it’s explained better in the Client Hints specification.
- HorstG 7y ago
  Client hints are not any more useful than traditional UA for privacy or progressive enhancement. Its the same content, just split up. Any browser not sending everything will have atrocious permission UX, nagging websites or just get the broken IE5 version. UA hints solve nothing, even after reading the spec
magicalist 7y ago
> it invalidates most of their stated reasons The "main advantages" section for client hints all seem to apply there.

minitech 7y ago

Triaging issues, sure. Progressive enhancement? If you’re parsing User-Agent to implement that, you’re doing it wrong. (Feature detection is the correct approach, when necessary.)

nicoburns 7y ago
There are cases like IndexedDB bugs in certain versions of Safari that are very hard to feature detect...
grose 7y ago
Here's an official Google page telling you to sniff UAs or their new feature will break everything: https://www.chromium.org/updates/same-site/incompatible-clients https://www.chromium.org/updates/same-site/incompatible-clie... Edit: OK, this isn't progressive enhancement. But it's still a major problem you have to sniff the User-Agent for. I don't want to sniff UAs either but when Chrome is wont to change how fundamental parts of the web work like cookies it's sometimes necessary. I know UA hints will still allow you to do this, but requiring a second request is going to make things like redirect pages difficult to implement.
- minitech 7y ago
  SameSite=None isn’t progressive enhancement.
  - grose 7y ago
    You're right, I should have replied elsewhere. By the way, if anyone knows what this _is_ called I would be interested to know. As far as I can see it's basically feature detection with no other way of detecting it besides the UA.
marcusarmstrong 7y ago
Can’t feature detect during SSR, so making an educated guess and falling back gracefully (when possible—many times it just isn’t, as with ES6 syntax) is important to get initial page load right by default.
- zamadatix 7y ago
  Because so many people abused the user agent header for things that could gracefully fall back (or they just made invalid assumptions from it) it was made an unreliable indicator for times you actually want to send shimmed content on first load.
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