14 ms·

Show HN: We got tired of asking 'What browser are you using?' and created this

521 points by ashastry 14y ago

stanleydrew 14y ago
A couple of things: I have cookies and javascript turned off in Chrome on Android. This apparently is too much to handle as I keep getting the standard rails request failure page. I switched to the default android browser where I run JavaScript and accept cookies and was told I was running Chrome on Linux. I then went back to Chrome and hit "request desktop site" which just changes the user agent string and was told I had Chrome on Linux. But also was told that I needed to turn on JavaScript to see the rest of the details. Why? It's just text.
- stanleydrew 14y ago
  Here are the three URLs respectively: https://aboutmybrowser.com/3112024109 https://aboutmybrowser.com/3112024109 https://aboutmybrowser.com/2548601500 https://aboutmybrowser.com/2548601500 https://aboutmybrowser.com/3662672473 https://aboutmybrowser.com/3662672473 I see now that some of the extra info is only discernable via JavaScript. But surely the info about whether JavaScript and cookies are enabled could be shown either way?
twog 14y ago
Another great tool that does this is http://supportdetails.com/ http://supportdetails.com/ I like how aboutmybrowser allows you to grab a quick link to share.
- calinet6 14y ago
  We use this. Works great and is very user-friendly even for people who aren't good with computers.
rlu 14y ago
Any modern version of Windows will show up here as "Windows NT". I think you should be able to determine the correct version through the user agent string. "Windows NT 6.2" is Win8, 6.1 is Win7, 6.0 is Vista.
markmm 14y ago
How many people don't know what browser they are using or OS? Pretty easy to find out.
- brittohalloran 14y ago
  LOTS (they don't read HN)
prateekdayal 14y ago
This is our weekend hack. Would love your feedback. The app is primarily for people doing customer support to understand if their users are using supported browsers and right plugins (like flash etc). Info link - https://aboutmybrowser.com/?nr https://aboutmybrowser.com/?nr (no-redirect since we want it to be zero click for your users)
- rplnt 14y ago
  If you access a direct link (to someone's browser info) the page should make it clear that it's not your browser you are visiting. Now it says "share your browser info" even if you opened some other url.
  - bmj1 14y ago
    Nice idea - this could be achieved by dropping a cookie.
    - ashitvora 14y ago
      I guess what he is trying to do is, ask user's OS, Browser, whether Flash or any other plugin is installed or not when you are talking to customer for support. Not to gather stats.
  - ashastry 14y ago
    Thanks for the feedback. We will fix this..
- deno 14y ago
  You might consider using (or consulting) Closure Library for UA sniffing. It’s pretty decent and Google actively maintains it. demo: https://closure-library.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/closure/goog/demos/useragent.html https://closure-library.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/closure/goo... docs: https://closure-library.googlecode.com/svn/docs/closure_goog_useragent_useragent.js.html https://closure-library.googlecode.com/svn/docs/closure_goog...
roshanonline 14y ago
cool stuff.
emilsedgh 14y ago
Seems nice. A couple of things: 1) It would be cool if it gets shorter urls so it would be usable on phone. 2) It detects Safari on Linux for me. Im using Konqueror. https://aboutmybrowser.com/848858317 https://aboutmybrowser.com/848858317
- prateekdayal 14y ago
  Thanks for pointing out the bug. We'll work on it. 'Safari on linux' does sound weird, doesn't it? :) We'll work on the urls. As such the layout scales down on phones (thanks to Bootstrap 2.0)
  - brianfryer 14y ago
    Great tool! I can definitely see myself using this :-) I viewed the site with Chrome for iOS (on an iPad 2), and it detected "Safari on OS/2". Is that correct?
    - adlpz 14y ago
      lolno (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OS/2 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OS/2). But it's funny.
- ashastry 14y ago
  We have fixed this error now. Please check it out...
anandpdoshi 14y ago
great initiative. very useful.
ashitvora 14y ago
nice one. simple but very useful when you are dealing with non-tech users.
sassyboy 14y ago
As geeks, we tend to forget sometimes how trivial questions such as "What browser are you using" leave some users completely stumped. Heck, there may be so many people who do not even know the meaning of a browser. This seems a simple yet great way to get the required info. Kudos!
robbiea 14y ago
I think if you add a "share via e-mail" feature right underneath it, it would be awesome.
aidos 14y ago
There's also supportdetails.com which has a feature to let you customise [1] the recipient email etc so people can easily forward the details through to you. [1] http://supportdetails.com/?sender_name=example&sender=email@example.com&recipient=email@example.com http://supportdetails.com/?sender_name=example&sender=em...
- ashastry 14y ago
  Yep. That one looks good and showed up in our research as well. In aboutmybrowser, we generate a custom url for you so you can copy the url and share your info easily. No need to copy all the text or enter your email to share the info. Just better to protect your privacy and anonymity. More of the similar products out there focus on users who want to find out their info (basically savvy users). This is for support agents who want to find out their users' browser info without asking them to go through so much trouble
  - pbhjpbhj 14y ago
    >No need to copy all the text or enter your email to share the info. // So a support provider has to send the user to your site. The user then has to copy the URL, paste it in to a message, lookup the person making the request for the details and forward them. The requester has to then go to your site and enter the URL in order to retrieve the details. Compared with the support supplier sending an email with a link to http://supportdetails.com/?sender_name=Example&sender=email1@example.com&recipient=email2@example.com http://supportdetails.com/?sender_name=Example&sender=em... and the user clicking "send details" and the requester getting the details in their email. All to protect the company offering the service from getting your email address?
    - mustardhamsters 14y ago
      Most of my tech support requests come in via email anyway. I send them to supportdetails.com, and they're very happy to send me an email. We have a tech-savvy userbase, so usually they say they liked it so much they'll use it themselves.
emillon 14y ago
I find it interesting that Flash is detected even with FlashBlock enabled. It seems that the add-on only prevents its display.
- sordina 14y ago
  I noticed that in Chrome too, but with 'click to play' turned on for plugins in the preferences... Not sure if it's a good or bad thing actually, since I'd rather sites assume I'm displaying flash so that I can continue blocking the flash content they want to show me, rather than them displaying it via other means.
sanat 14y ago
I use http://supportdetails.com/ http://supportdetails.com/ . It's solved this problem for me since atleast the last 4 years.
- dkroy 14y ago
  I actually prefer the one you linked, over this new one. I like the layout, and sharing options better.
nodata 14y ago
(non-ambiguous) letters rather than numbers would be better to keep the urls short.
jasonkester 14y ago
Cool. How about adding a way to automatically fire off a web hook after sniffing the information. As in: "Thanks for reporting the issue. Would you mind following this link so that we can get some information about your web browser? https://aboutmybrowser.com/?to=mysite.com/browserhook https://aboutmybrowser.com/?to=mysite.com/browserhook Or better, let me sign up for an account and register a named webhook with you, as in, https://aboutmybrowser.com/mysite https://aboutmybrowser.com/mysite, that would automatically forward information from anybody hitting it to the webhook url I'd configured at mysite.com. That would rock.
- prateekdayal 14y ago
  Yep! That's the next step. We wanted to get the MVP out and get feedback from the community. Please follow us on Twitter to stay updated (again, no bullshit and just product announcements) - https://twitter.com/aboutmybrowser https://twitter.com/aboutmybrowser
- telecuda 14y ago
  Yes, this. Even simpler (think phone support) would be to setup http://mysite.com/browser http://mysite.com/browser which points to https://aboutmybrowser.com/?to=mysite.com/browserhook https://aboutmybrowser.com/?to=mysite.com/browserhook and forwards the info to a support agent. The same idea works well for us with http://mysite.com/team http://mysite.com/team pointing to a TeamViewer session.
anonymoushn 14y ago
It looks like it detects the resolution of the primary display. I'm not sure if there's a way to pick the "right" display, though. Screen Width 1440 Screen Height 900 Browser Width 2560 Browser Height 1368
- w0utert 14y ago
  I'm not really sure if it's a glitch in the tool or that the resolution is (deliberately?) misreported by my browser, but on my iPad 3 it reports 1024x768. A nice extension to this would be to add some kind of database of popular mobile devices, so you can detect the device type from the reported attributes. I think you coud extract some interesting device usage statistics out of it.
  - NLips 14y ago
    That's the size reported by Safari so that pages scale correctly for a "retina" screen.
- JoeAltmaier 14y ago
  Yeah my 1920X1200 Dell display reports at 1536X960
- ken 14y ago
  For Firefox on OS X, at least, it seems to be reporting the resolution of the display which the window is mostly on. I think this corresponds to the display which holds the backing store for the window, but I'm not sure -- if you drag a window between a HiDPI display and a normal display, for example, it's rendered as a HiDPI window if it's mostly on the HiDPI display, and vice versa. I agree that I don't know if it's possible to do the "right" thing, or even exactly what the "right" thing would be.
Rulero 14y ago
This is certainly helpful, thanks for sharing this.
ottbot 14y ago
It's unfortunate that when using IE, both this and supportdetails.com only give versions as specific as "Windows XP" and "IE 8", whereas I get more detailed version info using Chrome on OS X. I'm trying to track down an IE issue and would love for our support team to get customers to use something like this. But we need more info to make it easier to reproduce the problem.
- prateekdayal 14y ago
  Can you please give us the permalink you get? Here or at prateek@supportbee.com so we can debug this? We want to make this super useful. This is just a MVP.
  - ottbot 14y ago
    Here you go: https://aboutmybrowser.com/890034160 https://aboutmybrowser.com/890034160 Windows XP on Virtuabox
    - prateekdayal 14y ago
      Thanks. Sorry I am confused. Did it get something wrong or were you expecting more info?
    - ottbot 14y ago
      Ah, I probably could have been more clear. I was expecting (hoping) for more information. It doesn't seem to have anything wrong, but it would be great if it was possible to get a more detailed version number, like 8.0.6001.18702.
      - Udo 14y ago
        A quick look at your User Agent string suggests there is no detailed version number made available by your browser in the first place.
pdw 14y ago
> We're sorry, but something went wrong. Iceweasel 15 (rebadged Firefox) on Linux.
- prateekdayal 14y ago
  Oops :( Can you please pass on the url string you got? (That has all your info)
  - gingerjoos 14y ago
    same as above. UA string : Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:10.0.7) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/10.0.7 Iceweasel/10.0.7
    - gingerjoos 14y ago
      works now, cool :)
  - anonova 14y ago
    Same. I'm on a mobile browser though (Mobile Chrome). https://aboutmybrowser.com/1027953242 https://aboutmybrowser.com/1027953242 Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; Android 4.0.4; cm_tenderloin Build/IMM76L) AppleWebKit/535.19 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/18.0.1025.166 Safari/535.19
  - vacri 14y ago
    Another iceweasel fault here: https://aboutmybrowser.com/1289055529 https://aboutmybrowser.com/1289055529
  - Bill_Dimm 14y ago
    Here are a few more with that message: Seamonkey 2.3.3 on Linux: https://aboutmybrowser.com/1328892199 https://aboutmybrowser.com/1328892199 Konqueror 3.5.5 on Linux (yes, this is ancient): https://aboutmybrowser.com/4093315824 https://aboutmybrowser.com/4093315824
  - pdw 14y ago
    Debian Iceweasel 15: https://aboutmybrowser.com/3221535922 https://aboutmybrowser.com/3221535922 Epiphany 3.4 (GNOME's browser): https://aboutmybrowser.com/3704839315 https://aboutmybrowser.com/3704839315
tech-no-logical 14y ago
The 'javascript : true' is redundant as this doesn't work with javascript disabled. Other than that : nice.
- aw3c2 14y ago
  Actually I visited it with Javascript disable. Saw the note about details needing JS, smiled in anticipation of Javascript being used to sniff details, got "javascript: false". I think they save the results but use JS to display only (bleh...).
irfan 14y ago
Hoping to see wget info, tried getting it via wget and it showed something went wrong :-( https://aboutmybrowser.com/2691400901 https://aboutmybrowser.com/2691400901
nemetroid 14y ago
If I visit with an odd User Agent I get a server error. https://aboutmybrowser.com/47523742 https://aboutmybrowser.com/47523742 is an example where I used User Agent Switcher in Firefox with the UA string Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Konqueror/4.5; FreeBSD) KHTML/4.5.4 (like Gecko)
- prateekdayal 14y ago
  Thanks for reporting this. Only when we started working on this we realized how complex user agent string parsing is. We will be improving it with all the feedback so you can expect things to be better in a day or so.
  - rampr 14y ago
    Offtopic though, You might want to read how user agent strings have evolved - http://webaim.org/blog/user-agent-string-history/ http://webaim.org/blog/user-agent-string-history/
ck2 14y ago
Woefully incomplete - you aren't even exploring navigator.plugins, installed fonts, DOM storage settings, etc. https://panopticlick.eff.org/index.php?action=log&js=yes https://panopticlick.eff.org/index.php?action=log&js=yes
- prateekdayal 14y ago
  Sorry to disappoint you. This is just a MVP and we will be adding a lot more stuff (including Java detection) in the coming weeks. Please follow us on Twitter to stay updated (since we don't want to capture your email address)
- andyjohnson0 14y ago
  I think you are being a bit hard on them. This is aimed at tech support scenarios. Its not a privacy tool.
- heyitsnick 14y ago
  It's this kind of negativity I wish I never read on Show HN threads. Woeful? Seriously? Deplorably bad or wretched[1]? It's an MVP of an interesting concept and this is how you respond? 1. http://www.thefreedictionary.com/woefully http://www.thefreedictionary.com/woefully
  - citricsquid 14y ago
    I thought ck2 was joking because the one he linked includes everything and was designed to show just how information you leak; not to exist as a way to quickly get a users info. Maybe not, though.
  - MartinCron 14y ago
    I can't even begin to count the times where I was unable to resolve a support problem because I didn't know the client browser's... font support? Yeah, woeful indeed.
_pferreir_ 14y ago
Great idea. I lost the count to the number of times I had to ask this question. This will really help a lot.
caio1982 14y ago
lynx -dump http://aboutmybrowser.com http://aboutmybrowser.com We're sorry, but something went wrong. Really, guys? It's mothereffing lynx!
- asdfaoeu 14y ago
  Actual site is down I think. I got that error in chrome on android.
pavanky 14y ago
It is identifying both chromium and firefox as chrome on Linux. The User Agent String looks suspicious too.. http://imgur.com/eYdlo,XjsOH http://imgur.com/eYdlo,XjsOH EDIT: I am on ArchLinux if that helps.
- keithpeter 14y ago
  Oddly enough, it is identifying Firefox 15 and Chrome 21 correctly on Ubuntu 12.04. I'm on an open wifi in a cafe.
- wreckimnaked 14y ago
  Yeah, Chromium on OS X is also getting identified as Chrome.
gog 14y ago
Android info also doesn't show up...
IndigoIRIS 14y ago
You should be grabbing this on your contact us page for your technical support enquiries and then, in your message to whomever gets the requests, add a bit add the bottom with 'for technical support use' followed by the browser information.
prawn 14y ago
White label it for web developers.
- prateekdayal 14y ago
  I think I know what you mean but can you explain your idea? Just the domain or some added functionality? API?
  - prawn 14y ago
    Branded, possibly sub-domains, etc. So it looks like a tool their business created for their clients.
ritcho 14y ago
http://supportdetails.com/ http://supportdetails.com/ still more useful, but nice work.
tsieling 14y ago
Nice. We did the same thing a few months ago and released it as open source: http://denimandsteel.com/work/browser-wink/ http://denimandsteel.com/work/browser-wink/
zackkitzmiller 14y ago
Findmebyip.com http://fmbip.com/get-started/ http://fmbip.com/get-started/ is a lot more full featured, I think.
kibwen 14y ago
That's an interesting Firefox logo you're displaying. Rather than featuring the generic "Planet Mozilla" globe, it appears to be using a map of Earth centered on Japan. The fox looks a bit sleeker as well. For comparison, here's the official Firefox branding page: http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/brand/identity/ http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/brand/identity/
- prateekdayal 14y ago
  I never noticed that :) Here is the icon set (free for commercial use) - http://www.iconfinder.com/search/?q=iconset%3Abrowsers http://www.iconfinder.com/search/?q=iconset%3Abrowsers
  - notatoad 14y ago
    the official icons for all the browsers have licenses that allow them to be used anywhere, as long as they are only used to refer only to their official product (i.e. you can use the firefox logo anywhere you want, as long as you only use it to mean firefox and not some other product) IANAL, but i believe that creative reproductions like the ones you are using violate the trademark of the actual icon owner, and they certainly violate the branding guidelines of all the browsers in question. Just use the official icons: it's clearer for your users, and it is what the browser vendors want you to do.
rjsw 14y ago
It correctly reports Firefox on NetBSD for me but also shows "OS Type: Linux".
victordg 14y ago
Great! Java detection would be a really nice feature. Further detail in OS versions would be pretty useful as well.
john-n 14y ago
We used something similar for our support requests, a helpful piece to add may ad block. You can check if ad block is on by trying to load some js on a path with usual ad block triggers.
emeraldd 14y ago
I'm definitely going to keep an eye on this one ;) Looks a touch incomplete now but I'll bet it gets a good deal more useful as time goes on.
bkardell 14y ago
Is it really telling me that my stock android browser is safari on mac osx?
christopherscot 14y ago
omg thank you
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
Shorel 14y ago
Can you internationalize the texts?
laserbrain 14y ago
Doesn't work properly. My OS is FreeBSD, site says my "OS Type" would be Linux. Should be Unix or BSD instead.
vog 14y ago
For me, this site is currently quite useless. It merely shows: "We're sorry, but something went wrong." Is it a bug in the browser recognition, or is the site simply down due to its exposure to HN?
- HyprMusic 14y ago
  What browser are you using?
- ashastry 14y ago
  It currently shows this page if it cant parse the user agent. Can you post the url with the error? It would help us debug.
  - joncalhoun 14y ago
    https://aboutmybrowser.com/2605932122 https://aboutmybrowser.com/2605932122 This is an error page and I am requesting the page using Chrome (18.0.1025123) on Android ICS (4.0.4 on a Galaxy Nexus). Something to note - if i check the "request desktop site" setting in chrome it seems to work, but that may be because chrome pretends to be running on linux in that case.
heroic 14y ago
Firefox on mac shows me this :P https://dl.dropbox.com/u/14534468/Screen%20Shot%202012-09-10%20at%2011.17.40%20AM.png https://dl.dropbox.com/u/14534468/Screen%20Shot%202012-09-10...
cabirum 14y ago
Windows 8 (rtm) is detected as "Windows NT" https://aboutmybrowser.com/647576433 https://aboutmybrowser.com/647576433
lordlarm 14y ago
With Maxthon I get "We're sorry, but something went wrong" (https://aboutmybrowser.com/398693348 https://aboutmybrowser.com/398693348) Also, why are you using (ugly) unofficial icons for some of the browsers (Opera for example)? :)
- josteink 14y ago
  Same for stock JB browser.
  - joe_fishfish 14y ago
    Also Chrome on JB.
    - gordonguthrie 14y ago
      and Rockmelt
- jablan 14y ago
  Same with Midori 0.4 (https://aboutmybrowser.com/1408260971 https://aboutmybrowser.com/1408260971)
- ashastry 14y ago
  We have fixed this error now. Please check it out...
jonasvp 14y ago
Wow, talk about synchronicity... I put up our site doing the exact same thing last night! Design-wise you're definitely ahead, however. :-) Our version is at http://www.browser-details.com http://www.browser-details.com. When you sign up you get your own subdomain - or you define a CNAME under your own domain [premium]. You can upload your logo, define a list of recipients, and your clients can send the browser details directly to one of those recipients/departments. We still need to change the color scheme (I wanted to launch at the end of the week, so it's straight Bootstrap for now) and finish the translation to German. Also: Premium version! Feel free to be a beta tester! Also: all the best to the OP, great idea! ;-)
- rplnt 14y ago
  Your "Available size" is reporting 1680x1022 for me, I suspect it is supposed to be window size, which is actually 1006x929 as reported by OP's page.
  - jonasvp 14y ago
    You're right, it should be window size. Fixed it accordingly.
- pakeha 14y ago
  Your site correctly identified my browser as Chrome for iPhone. OP's site detected it as Safari on OS/2. Kudos. Perhaps you could share some insights on why this might be.
  - jonasvp 14y ago
    Sure! We're using http://user-agent-string.info/ http://user-agent-string.info/ I didn't feel up to doing the parsing myself...
- davewasthere 14y ago
  Your site at least works. aboutmybrowser.com failed with two of my devices with a generic message. Your site works perfectly. Well done!
dsr_ 14y ago
Let me make a suggestion: for reporting, return a URL with a set of word codes rather than numbers and letters. https://aboutmybrowser.com/dog_walrus_banana_door https://aboutmybrowser.com/dog_walrus_banana_door If you figure out a set of 1000 short words that are not too close to each other and easy to pronounce, four of them gives you a trillion possible combinations. If you window it so that the first word is always the same on a given day and keep a record of that list, you can differentiate a billion combinations in a day and have a good check that the information was gathered recently (or else is a thousand or more days old.) http://www.manythings.org/vocabulary/lists/l/ http://www.manythings.org/vocabulary/lists/l/ will get you common words, as a start.
- muyuu 14y ago
  That's a nice compilation. I used lists from here: http://www.bckelk.ukfsn.org/menu.html http://www.bckelk.ukfsn.org/menu.html to programmatically compile a list for a similar purpose, and a markov-chain based sentence generator that I didn't use because it could generate sensitive stuff occasionally...
- zethraeus 14y ago
  This is especially brilliant in this situation because it would make the OP's website invaluable for over the phone debugging - the (unfortunate) situation in which it is most likely to be used. Numeral lists are anathema to phonecalls. Great suggestion.
- sylvinus 14y ago
  Beware that "walrus" may not be that easy to pronounce by a foreigner :)
  - swalberg 14y ago
    Using the 26 letters from the NATO alphabet might be easier, it's made to be intelligible for non-English speakers over a radio connection with static. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NATO_phonetic_alphabet http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NATO_phonetic_alphabet
q_revert 14y ago
works nicely for me in firefox/opera, but doesn't do too well in anything else... although I'd doubt you'd need to worry about them too much, still, it's always nice to see apps like this fail gracefully, if you had a 'this particular browser isn't supported' type message rather than 'something went wrong' http://imgur.com/a/chkc2 http://imgur.com/a/chkc2 broken useragents.. konqueror: Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Konqueror/4.6; Linux) KHTML/4.6.5 (like Gecko) Fedora/4.6.5-8.fc14 seamonkey: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux x86_64; en-US; rv:1.9.1.19) Gecko/20110429 Fedora/2.0.14-1.fc14 SeaMonkey/2.0.14 dillo: dillo/0.8.6 < -- wouldn't worry about that one too much :) epiphany: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux x86_64; en-ie) AppleWebKit/534.16+ (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0 Safari/534.16+ Epiphany/2.30.6 midori: Midori/0.2 (X11; Linux; U; en-ie) WebKit/534.7+
- ashastry 14y ago
  We have fixed these errors now. Please check it out...
tzaman 14y ago
Too much scrolling for the amount of information given, otherwise, good job!
matan_a 14y ago
It would be great to combine some public data source about browsers together with what you have like, for example, adding information from WURFL: http://wurfl.sourceforge.net/help_doc.php http://wurfl.sourceforge.net/help_doc.php Mind their (new) license tho if you plan to use them specifically. Seems like a great fit so the user does not have to perform their own cross-referencing.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
wldlyinaccurate 14y ago
I don't know how easy it is (or if it's even possible) but it would be really useful to detect what add-ons are enabled. Things like Adblock, Flashblock, cause a lot of trouble and some users don't even know that they have them installed. I also wonder whether it's possible to detect whether Flash is actually enabled. I disable the Flash plugin on Chrome by default, but tools like this generally don't pick up on that.
- MartinCron 14y ago
  I also wonder whether it's possible to detect whether Flash is actually enabled. You should be able to try to actually do something with a tiny embedded flash application and have that flip a "yes, flash is really on" bit.
mmahemoff 14y ago
Great idea. Would be brilliant if it ran the browser through a battery of capability tests (like HTML5test.com).
klodolph 14y ago
I noticed that it's not at all fazed by user agent spoofing. Nice.
CJefferson 14y ago
You don't make a great use of screen space. On my laptop, the very bottom thing on the page I can see is a giant 'chrome' logo. I initially assumed all you were doing is displaying the icon of my web-browser. 2/3 of the screen height is basically empty, apart from one tiny text box.
antihero 14y ago
Please could you make it so it uses normal scrollbars? Fucking with the scrollbars often breaks stuff.
- ashastry 14y ago
  We are using normal scrollbars. Can you post a screenshot?
  - antihero 14y ago
    Ah, apologies! I posted that on the wrong topic, I meant to post it about that ivory thing.
tshadwell 14y ago
It doesn't differentiate between the various versions of chrome. Chromium, for example has no Google nonsense in it.
msredmond 14y ago
I had to send five "what browser are you using" e-mails just last Friday. And people never send the OS when we ask. Thank you, thank you for making this.
- MartinCron 14y ago
  One thing that has become standard practice for me is to have any "contact us" forms or error reporting pages automatically include all of this information when sending messages. I also generally record persist the browser information on important "events" such as registration and login, so I can refer to it if I need it later. You don't need it most of the time, but it saves so much time to not have to bother asking for it.
josteink 14y ago
Latest (regular desktop) Chrome on Windows 8 gets reported as Windows NT. I mean.. Sure there's probably quite a bit of remnants from the Windows NT codebase here and there, but it's probably not very useful for reporting to support etc.
artjumble 14y ago
Can you add the info about Flash Player too? Like this: http://playerversion.com/ http://playerversion.com/
derleth 14y ago
500 Errors: Lynx on Linux: https://aboutmybrowser.com/1909674851 https://aboutmybrowser.com/1909674851 w3m on Linux: https://aboutmybrowser.com/1942341369 https://aboutmybrowser.com/1942341369 links on Linux: https://aboutmybrowser.com/3183933151 https://aboutmybrowser.com/3183933151 elinks on Linux: https://aboutmybrowser.com/3918182904 https://aboutmybrowser.com/3918182904 Also, it works just fine on Firefox with NoScript blocking JavaScript from your site.
- lemieux 14y ago
  Didn't work on Android with native browser for me.
- ashastry 14y ago
  Hi We have just fixed these errors. Please check it out..
fourstar 14y ago
I gave this out in a suggestion couple weeks ago in #javascript on freenode. Nice job, since this is what I was looking for. Previously was using http://www.mybrowserinfo.com/detail.asp?bhcp=1 http://www.mybrowserinfo.com/detail.asp?bhcp=1
johns 14y ago
Please make the 'Copy Link' button the biggest primary looking thing on the page. Like 48px big big.
cnlwsu 14y ago
Love it, I forwarded it to our QA and support team. One problem seems to be since the url bar is automatically updated (redirect?) with the current results people ended up bookmarking it instead of the just "aboutmybrowser.com" so they saw FF come up as a result in IE and such when opening in other browser.
Steko 14y ago
There's a feature in a few iOS browsers (Atomic, Sleipnir at least) to report as something else to avoid broken mobile sites or whatever. There are a number of firefox add ons that do the same, this one has site specific settings which is exactly what I needed and it works great: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/uacontrol/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/uacontrol/
SeanDav 14y ago
Not a criticism at all but what is the point of this? This is a genuine question, I have no idea why this seems important/interesting enough to be No 1 on HN. What am I missing?
- citricsquid 14y ago
  I take it you've never done support or tried to fix a users issue? Trying to find out what browser and version a user has can often be like pulling teeth if they're not an experienced internet users; being able to link them to a page and get all the info you need without a miscommunication is a godsend.
ivankirigin 14y ago
The screen size vs monitor size looks incorrect https://aboutmybrowser.com/3056072335 https://aboutmybrowser.com/3056072335 I'm browsing on a second monitor
- aleyan 14y ago
  I think this is more a function of the browser reporting things poorly in the header. Perhaps some client side javascript can help here? My multi monitor setup reports even wilder results: https://aboutmybrowser.com/1708443426 https://aboutmybrowser.com/1708443426
- notatoad 14y ago
  It does the same thing for me - i'm browsing on my primary monitor, but it reports the resolution of my leftmost monitor. I'm guessing there isn't much that can be done other than file a bug report with whoever makes your browser.
override 14y ago
You should add pixel density to the output.
newman314 14y ago
Reports webOS incorrectly.
justanotheratom 14y ago
FWIW, some information is not showing up for Metro IE10.
gosu 14y ago
Tried it with Conkeror on Linux: "We're sorry, but something went wrong."
DenisM 14y ago
I would rather ask people to send their inquires through my "contact us" form, wherein I could collect all the data I need. Much less confusing to the user, me thinks...
slykat 14y ago
Now if there was an easy way of showing a user where the address bar is so they can type it in...
jelder 14y ago
It accurately detected that I'm running Safari on OS/2. Pretty great! https://aboutmybrowser.com/4004112543 https://aboutmybrowser.com/4004112543 (Actually, Chrome os iOS, but close enough.)
gsmcnamara 14y ago
Love it!
helentoomik 14y ago
Nice, but it does not work very well for me (Opera on Mac). It reports the browser and OS correctly, but then it claims I do not have JavaScript enabled (which I do). Also when I click Contact support at the bottom, the page gets dimmed out as if for a dialog, but I see no actual dialog anywhere. So somewhere in your JS code there is a bug that makes it fail in Opera. https://aboutmybrowser.com/2079851324 https://aboutmybrowser.com/2079851324
_feda_ 14y ago
Is it possible to identify certain add-ons in firefox even if they aren't in the user agent string, or is that the only information you get from the client? Would be cool if it could tell that I use pentadactyl, stylish, ad-block plus etc. etc.
ddffnn 14y ago
Suggestion: Check the version against the latest release and kindly notify visitors if a newer release is available. Provide the link to make it easy to upgrade. I've often had family and friends ask me why some site or service doesn't work but they don't know if their browsers are up to date. I would love to start by directing them to a site like this and telling them to upgrade if they aren't using the latest version of their browser.
kevin_p 14y ago
Might not work properly for users in China. It's telling me I don't have JavaScript enabled, when I do (Firefox on OSX, no weird extensions), and based on the tab bar icon is still loading after >2 minutes. Perhaps you're loading some blocked-in-China script that's preventing your page load event?
- kevin_p 14y ago
  Update: The page did eventually load and worked properly. I looked at your page source and found Facebook and Google Plus, which are both blocked here - that would probably be what was stopping it working before. Perhaps you should load these asynchronously, instead of waiting for them to load / time out before updating the information?
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
gulbrandr 14y ago
Related: http://supportdetails.com/ http://supportdetails.com/
countessa 14y ago
nice idea. found it a bit annoying that I had to scroll to get some details that could easily sit above the fold.....i recognise the need for some sort of virality and share-ability, and also that the idea is users will send tech support the link, but perhaps it could be tempered a little and you could push some important details above the fold - for example browser and browser version and javascript on or off.
- prateekdayal 14y ago
  Thanks for the feedback. We have gotten this feedback from others as well and we will be improving the layout shortly.
prateekdayal 14y ago
We just fixed a bunch of errors and you should see results for android and several other browsers. Please try it out and let us know. We are working on adding more browser icons. Thank you for your patience
xsaero00 14y ago
http://www.whatismybrowser.com/ http://www.whatismybrowser.com/ is nicer looking.

521 points by ashastry 14y ago

A couple of things: I have cookies and javascript turned off in Chrome on Android. This apparently is too much to handle as I keep getting the standard rails request failure page. I switched to the default android browser where I run JavaScript and accept cookies and was told I was running Chrome on Linux. I then went back to Chrome and hit "request desktop site" which just changes the user agent string and was told I had Chrome on Linux. But also was told that I needed to turn on JavaScript to see the rest of the details. Why? It's just text.

stanleydrew 14y ago
Here are the three URLs respectively: https://aboutmybrowser.com/3112024109 https://aboutmybrowser.com/3112024109 https://aboutmybrowser.com/2548601500 https://aboutmybrowser.com/2548601500 https://aboutmybrowser.com/3662672473 https://aboutmybrowser.com/3662672473 I see now that some of the extra info is only discernable via JavaScript. But surely the info about whether JavaScript and cookies are enabled could be shown either way?

twog 14y ago

Another great tool that does this is http://supportdetails.com/ http://supportdetails.com/ I like how aboutmybrowser allows you to grab a quick link to share.

calinet6 14y ago
We use this. Works great and is very user-friendly even for people who aren't good with computers.

rlu 14y ago

Any modern version of Windows will show up here as "Windows NT". I think you should be able to determine the correct version through the user agent string. "Windows NT 6.2" is Win8, 6.1 is Win7, 6.0 is Vista.

markmm 14y ago

How many people don't know what browser they are using or OS? Pretty easy to find out.

brittohalloran 14y ago
LOTS (they don't read HN)

prateekdayal 14y ago

This is our weekend hack. Would love your feedback. The app is primarily for people doing customer support to understand if their users are using supported browsers and right plugins (like flash etc). Info link - https://aboutmybrowser.com/?nr https://aboutmybrowser.com/?nr (no-redirect since we want it to be zero click for your users)

rplnt 14y ago
If you access a direct link (to someone's browser info) the page should make it clear that it's not your browser you are visiting. Now it says "share your browser info" even if you opened some other url.
- bmj1 14y ago
  Nice idea - this could be achieved by dropping a cookie.
  - ashitvora 14y ago
    I guess what he is trying to do is, ask user's OS, Browser, whether Flash or any other plugin is installed or not when you are talking to customer for support. Not to gather stats.
- ashastry 14y ago
  Thanks for the feedback. We will fix this..
deno 14y ago
You might consider using (or consulting) Closure Library for UA sniffing. It’s pretty decent and Google actively maintains it. demo: https://closure-library.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/closure/goog/demos/useragent.html https://closure-library.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/closure/goo... docs: https://closure-library.googlecode.com/svn/docs/closure_goog_useragent_useragent.js.html https://closure-library.googlecode.com/svn/docs/closure_goog...

roshanonline 14y ago

cool stuff.

emilsedgh 14y ago

Seems nice. A couple of things: 1) It would be cool if it gets shorter urls so it would be usable on phone. 2) It detects Safari on Linux for me. Im using Konqueror. https://aboutmybrowser.com/848858317 https://aboutmybrowser.com/848858317

prateekdayal 14y ago
Thanks for pointing out the bug. We'll work on it. 'Safari on linux' does sound weird, doesn't it? :) We'll work on the urls. As such the layout scales down on phones (thanks to Bootstrap 2.0)
- brianfryer 14y ago
  Great tool! I can definitely see myself using this :-) I viewed the site with Chrome for iOS (on an iPad 2), and it detected "Safari on OS/2". Is that correct?
  - adlpz 14y ago
    lolno (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OS/2 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OS/2). But it's funny.
ashastry 14y ago
We have fixed this error now. Please check it out...

anandpdoshi 14y ago

great initiative. very useful.

ashitvora 14y ago

nice one. simple but very useful when you are dealing with non-tech users.

sassyboy 14y ago

As geeks, we tend to forget sometimes how trivial questions such as "What browser are you using" leave some users completely stumped. Heck, there may be so many people who do not even know the meaning of a browser. This seems a simple yet great way to get the required info. Kudos!

robbiea 14y ago

I think if you add a "share via e-mail" feature right underneath it, it would be awesome.

aidos 14y ago

There's also supportdetails.com which has a feature to let you customise [1] the recipient email etc so people can easily forward the details through to you. [1] http://supportdetails.com/?sender_name=example&sender=email@example.com&recipient=email@example.com http://supportdetails.com/?sender_name=example&sender=em...

ashastry 14y ago
Yep. That one looks good and showed up in our research as well. In aboutmybrowser, we generate a custom url for you so you can copy the url and share your info easily. No need to copy all the text or enter your email to share the info. Just better to protect your privacy and anonymity. More of the similar products out there focus on users who want to find out their info (basically savvy users). This is for support agents who want to find out their users' browser info without asking them to go through so much trouble
- pbhjpbhj 14y ago
  >No need to copy all the text or enter your email to share the info. // So a support provider has to send the user to your site. The user then has to copy the URL, paste it in to a message, lookup the person making the request for the details and forward them. The requester has to then go to your site and enter the URL in order to retrieve the details. Compared with the support supplier sending an email with a link to http://supportdetails.com/?sender_name=Example&sender=email1@example.com&recipient=email2@example.com http://supportdetails.com/?sender_name=Example&sender=em... and the user clicking "send details" and the requester getting the details in their email. All to protect the company offering the service from getting your email address?
  - mustardhamsters 14y ago
    Most of my tech support requests come in via email anyway. I send them to supportdetails.com, and they're very happy to send me an email. We have a tech-savvy userbase, so usually they say they liked it so much they'll use it themselves.

emillon 14y ago

I find it interesting that Flash is detected even with FlashBlock enabled. It seems that the add-on only prevents its display.

sordina 14y ago
I noticed that in Chrome too, but with 'click to play' turned on for plugins in the preferences... Not sure if it's a good or bad thing actually, since I'd rather sites assume I'm displaying flash so that I can continue blocking the flash content they want to show me, rather than them displaying it via other means.

sanat 14y ago

I use http://supportdetails.com/ http://supportdetails.com/ . It's solved this problem for me since atleast the last 4 years.

dkroy 14y ago
I actually prefer the one you linked, over this new one. I like the layout, and sharing options better.

nodata 14y ago

(non-ambiguous) letters rather than numbers would be better to keep the urls short.

jasonkester 14y ago

Cool. How about adding a way to automatically fire off a web hook after sniffing the information. As in: "Thanks for reporting the issue. Would you mind following this link so that we can get some information about your web browser? https://aboutmybrowser.com/?to=mysite.com/browserhook https://aboutmybrowser.com/?to=mysite.com/browserhook Or better, let me sign up for an account and register a named webhook with you, as in, https://aboutmybrowser.com/mysite https://aboutmybrowser.com/mysite, that would automatically forward information from anybody hitting it to the webhook url I'd configured at mysite.com. That would rock.

prateekdayal 14y ago
Yep! That's the next step. We wanted to get the MVP out and get feedback from the community. Please follow us on Twitter to stay updated (again, no bullshit and just product announcements) - https://twitter.com/aboutmybrowser https://twitter.com/aboutmybrowser
telecuda 14y ago
Yes, this. Even simpler (think phone support) would be to setup http://mysite.com/browser http://mysite.com/browser which points to https://aboutmybrowser.com/?to=mysite.com/browserhook https://aboutmybrowser.com/?to=mysite.com/browserhook and forwards the info to a support agent. The same idea works well for us with http://mysite.com/team http://mysite.com/team pointing to a TeamViewer session.

anonymoushn 14y ago

It looks like it detects the resolution of the primary display. I'm not sure if there's a way to pick the "right" display, though. Screen Width 1440 Screen Height 900 Browser Width 2560 Browser Height 1368

w0utert 14y ago
I'm not really sure if it's a glitch in the tool or that the resolution is (deliberately?) misreported by my browser, but on my iPad 3 it reports 1024x768. A nice extension to this would be to add some kind of database of popular mobile devices, so you can detect the device type from the reported attributes. I think you coud extract some interesting device usage statistics out of it.
- NLips 14y ago
  That's the size reported by Safari so that pages scale correctly for a "retina" screen.
JoeAltmaier 14y ago
Yeah my 1920X1200 Dell display reports at 1536X960
ken 14y ago
For Firefox on OS X, at least, it seems to be reporting the resolution of the display which the window is mostly on. I think this corresponds to the display which holds the backing store for the window, but I'm not sure -- if you drag a window between a HiDPI display and a normal display, for example, it's rendered as a HiDPI window if it's mostly on the HiDPI display, and vice versa. I agree that I don't know if it's possible to do the "right" thing, or even exactly what the "right" thing would be.

Rulero 14y ago

This is certainly helpful, thanks for sharing this.

ottbot 14y ago

It's unfortunate that when using IE, both this and supportdetails.com only give versions as specific as "Windows XP" and "IE 8", whereas I get more detailed version info using Chrome on OS X. I'm trying to track down an IE issue and would love for our support team to get customers to use something like this. But we need more info to make it easier to reproduce the problem.

prateekdayal 14y ago
Can you please give us the permalink you get? Here or at prateek@supportbee.com so we can debug this? We want to make this super useful. This is just a MVP.
- ottbot 14y ago
  Here you go: https://aboutmybrowser.com/890034160 https://aboutmybrowser.com/890034160 Windows XP on Virtuabox
  - prateekdayal 14y ago
    Thanks. Sorry I am confused. Did it get something wrong or were you expecting more info?
  - ottbot 14y ago
    Ah, I probably could have been more clear. I was expecting (hoping) for more information. It doesn't seem to have anything wrong, but it would be great if it was possible to get a more detailed version number, like 8.0.6001.18702.
    - Udo 14y ago
      A quick look at your User Agent string suggests there is no detailed version number made available by your browser in the first place.

pdw 14y ago

> We're sorry, but something went wrong. Iceweasel 15 (rebadged Firefox) on Linux.

prateekdayal 14y ago
Oops :( Can you please pass on the url string you got? (That has all your info)
- gingerjoos 14y ago
  same as above. UA string : Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:10.0.7) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/10.0.7 Iceweasel/10.0.7
  - gingerjoos 14y ago
    works now, cool :)
- anonova 14y ago
  Same. I'm on a mobile browser though (Mobile Chrome). https://aboutmybrowser.com/1027953242 https://aboutmybrowser.com/1027953242 Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; Android 4.0.4; cm_tenderloin Build/IMM76L) AppleWebKit/535.19 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/18.0.1025.166 Safari/535.19
- vacri 14y ago
  Another iceweasel fault here: https://aboutmybrowser.com/1289055529 https://aboutmybrowser.com/1289055529
- Bill_Dimm 14y ago
  Here are a few more with that message: Seamonkey 2.3.3 on Linux: https://aboutmybrowser.com/1328892199 https://aboutmybrowser.com/1328892199 Konqueror 3.5.5 on Linux (yes, this is ancient): https://aboutmybrowser.com/4093315824 https://aboutmybrowser.com/4093315824
- pdw 14y ago
  Debian Iceweasel 15: https://aboutmybrowser.com/3221535922 https://aboutmybrowser.com/3221535922 Epiphany 3.4 (GNOME's browser): https://aboutmybrowser.com/3704839315 https://aboutmybrowser.com/3704839315

tech-no-logical 14y ago

The 'javascript : true' is redundant as this doesn't work with javascript disabled. Other than that : nice.

aw3c2 14y ago
Actually I visited it with Javascript disable. Saw the note about details needing JS, smiled in anticipation of Javascript being used to sniff details, got "javascript: false". I think they save the results but use JS to display only (bleh...).

irfan 14y ago

Hoping to see wget info, tried getting it via wget and it showed something went wrong :-( https://aboutmybrowser.com/2691400901 https://aboutmybrowser.com/2691400901

nemetroid 14y ago

If I visit with an odd User Agent I get a server error. https://aboutmybrowser.com/47523742 https://aboutmybrowser.com/47523742 is an example where I used User Agent Switcher in Firefox with the UA string Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Konqueror/4.5; FreeBSD) KHTML/4.5.4 (like Gecko)

prateekdayal 14y ago
Thanks for reporting this. Only when we started working on this we realized how complex user agent string parsing is. We will be improving it with all the feedback so you can expect things to be better in a day or so.
- rampr 14y ago
  Offtopic though, You might want to read how user agent strings have evolved - http://webaim.org/blog/user-agent-string-history/ http://webaim.org/blog/user-agent-string-history/

ck2 14y ago

Woefully incomplete - you aren't even exploring navigator.plugins, installed fonts, DOM storage settings, etc. https://panopticlick.eff.org/index.php?action=log&js=yes https://panopticlick.eff.org/index.php?action=log&js=yes

prateekdayal 14y ago
Sorry to disappoint you. This is just a MVP and we will be adding a lot more stuff (including Java detection) in the coming weeks. Please follow us on Twitter to stay updated (since we don't want to capture your email address)
andyjohnson0 14y ago
I think you are being a bit hard on them. This is aimed at tech support scenarios. Its not a privacy tool.
heyitsnick 14y ago
It's this kind of negativity I wish I never read on Show HN threads. Woeful? Seriously? Deplorably bad or wretched[1]? It's an MVP of an interesting concept and this is how you respond? 1. http://www.thefreedictionary.com/woefully http://www.thefreedictionary.com/woefully
- citricsquid 14y ago
  I thought ck2 was joking because the one he linked includes everything and was designed to show just how information you leak; not to exist as a way to quickly get a users info. Maybe not, though.
- MartinCron 14y ago
  I can't even begin to count the times where I was unable to resolve a support problem because I didn't know the client browser's... font support? Yeah, woeful indeed.

_pferreir_ 14y ago

Great idea. I lost the count to the number of times I had to ask this question. This will really help a lot.

caio1982 14y ago

lynx -dump http://aboutmybrowser.com http://aboutmybrowser.com We're sorry, but something went wrong. Really, guys? It's mothereffing lynx!

asdfaoeu 14y ago
Actual site is down I think. I got that error in chrome on android.

pavanky 14y ago

It is identifying both chromium and firefox as chrome on Linux. The User Agent String looks suspicious too.. http://imgur.com/eYdlo,XjsOH http://imgur.com/eYdlo,XjsOH EDIT: I am on ArchLinux if that helps.

keithpeter 14y ago
Oddly enough, it is identifying Firefox 15 and Chrome 21 correctly on Ubuntu 12.04. I'm on an open wifi in a cafe.
wreckimnaked 14y ago
Yeah, Chromium on OS X is also getting identified as Chrome.

gog 14y ago

Android info also doesn't show up...

IndigoIRIS 14y ago

You should be grabbing this on your contact us page for your technical support enquiries and then, in your message to whomever gets the requests, add a bit add the bottom with 'for technical support use' followed by the browser information.

prawn 14y ago

White label it for web developers.

prateekdayal 14y ago
I think I know what you mean but can you explain your idea? Just the domain or some added functionality? API?
- prawn 14y ago
  Branded, possibly sub-domains, etc. So it looks like a tool their business created for their clients.

ritcho 14y ago

http://supportdetails.com/ http://supportdetails.com/ still more useful, but nice work.

tsieling 14y ago

Nice. We did the same thing a few months ago and released it as open source: http://denimandsteel.com/work/browser-wink/ http://denimandsteel.com/work/browser-wink/

zackkitzmiller 14y ago

Findmebyip.com http://fmbip.com/get-started/ http://fmbip.com/get-started/ is a lot more full featured, I think.

kibwen 14y ago

That's an interesting Firefox logo you're displaying. Rather than featuring the generic "Planet Mozilla" globe, it appears to be using a map of Earth centered on Japan. The fox looks a bit sleeker as well. For comparison, here's the official Firefox branding page: http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/brand/identity/ http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/brand/identity/

prateekdayal 14y ago
I never noticed that :) Here is the icon set (free for commercial use) - http://www.iconfinder.com/search/?q=iconset%3Abrowsers http://www.iconfinder.com/search/?q=iconset%3Abrowsers
- notatoad 14y ago
  the official icons for all the browsers have licenses that allow them to be used anywhere, as long as they are only used to refer only to their official product (i.e. you can use the firefox logo anywhere you want, as long as you only use it to mean firefox and not some other product) IANAL, but i believe that creative reproductions like the ones you are using violate the trademark of the actual icon owner, and they certainly violate the branding guidelines of all the browsers in question. Just use the official icons: it's clearer for your users, and it is what the browser vendors want you to do.

rjsw 14y ago

It correctly reports Firefox on NetBSD for me but also shows "OS Type: Linux".

victordg 14y ago

Great! Java detection would be a really nice feature. Further detail in OS versions would be pretty useful as well.

john-n 14y ago

We used something similar for our support requests, a helpful piece to add may ad block. You can check if ad block is on by trying to load some js on a path with usual ad block triggers.

emeraldd 14y ago

I'm definitely going to keep an eye on this one ;) Looks a touch incomplete now but I'll bet it gets a good deal more useful as time goes on.

bkardell 14y ago

Is it really telling me that my stock android browser is safari on mac osx?

christopherscot 14y ago

omg thank you

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

Shorel 14y ago

Can you internationalize the texts?

laserbrain 14y ago

Doesn't work properly. My OS is FreeBSD, site says my "OS Type" would be Linux. Should be Unix or BSD instead.

vog 14y ago

For me, this site is currently quite useless. It merely shows: "We're sorry, but something went wrong." Is it a bug in the browser recognition, or is the site simply down due to its exposure to HN?

HyprMusic 14y ago
What browser are you using?
ashastry 14y ago
It currently shows this page if it cant parse the user agent. Can you post the url with the error? It would help us debug.
- joncalhoun 14y ago
  https://aboutmybrowser.com/2605932122 https://aboutmybrowser.com/2605932122 This is an error page and I am requesting the page using Chrome (18.0.1025123) on Android ICS (4.0.4 on a Galaxy Nexus). Something to note - if i check the "request desktop site" setting in chrome it seems to work, but that may be because chrome pretends to be running on linux in that case.

heroic 14y ago

Firefox on mac shows me this :P https://dl.dropbox.com/u/14534468/Screen%20Shot%202012-09-10%20at%2011.17.40%20AM.png https://dl.dropbox.com/u/14534468/Screen%20Shot%202012-09-10...

cabirum 14y ago

Windows 8 (rtm) is detected as "Windows NT" https://aboutmybrowser.com/647576433 https://aboutmybrowser.com/647576433

lordlarm 14y ago

With Maxthon I get "We're sorry, but something went wrong" (https://aboutmybrowser.com/398693348 https://aboutmybrowser.com/398693348) Also, why are you using (ugly) unofficial icons for some of the browsers (Opera for example)? :)

josteink 14y ago
Same for stock JB browser.
- joe_fishfish 14y ago
  Also Chrome on JB.
  - gordonguthrie 14y ago
    and Rockmelt
jablan 14y ago
Same with Midori 0.4 (https://aboutmybrowser.com/1408260971 https://aboutmybrowser.com/1408260971)
ashastry 14y ago
We have fixed this error now. Please check it out...

jonasvp 14y ago

Wow, talk about synchronicity... I put up our site doing the exact same thing last night! Design-wise you're definitely ahead, however. :-) Our version is at http://www.browser-details.com http://www.browser-details.com. When you sign up you get your own subdomain - or you define a CNAME under your own domain [premium]. You can upload your logo, define a list of recipients, and your clients can send the browser details directly to one of those recipients/departments. We still need to change the color scheme (I wanted to launch at the end of the week, so it's straight Bootstrap for now) and finish the translation to German. Also: Premium version! Feel free to be a beta tester! Also: all the best to the OP, great idea! ;-)

rplnt 14y ago
Your "Available size" is reporting 1680x1022 for me, I suspect it is supposed to be window size, which is actually 1006x929 as reported by OP's page.
- jonasvp 14y ago
  You're right, it should be window size. Fixed it accordingly.
pakeha 14y ago
Your site correctly identified my browser as Chrome for iPhone. OP's site detected it as Safari on OS/2. Kudos. Perhaps you could share some insights on why this might be.
- jonasvp 14y ago
  Sure! We're using http://user-agent-string.info/ http://user-agent-string.info/ I didn't feel up to doing the parsing myself...
davewasthere 14y ago
Your site at least works. aboutmybrowser.com failed with two of my devices with a generic message. Your site works perfectly. Well done!

dsr_ 14y ago

Let me make a suggestion: for reporting, return a URL with a set of word codes rather than numbers and letters. https://aboutmybrowser.com/dog_walrus_banana_door https://aboutmybrowser.com/dog_walrus_banana_door If you figure out a set of 1000 short words that are not too close to each other and easy to pronounce, four of them gives you a trillion possible combinations. If you window it so that the first word is always the same on a given day and keep a record of that list, you can differentiate a billion combinations in a day and have a good check that the information was gathered recently (or else is a thousand or more days old.) http://www.manythings.org/vocabulary/lists/l/ http://www.manythings.org/vocabulary/lists/l/ will get you common words, as a start.

muyuu 14y ago
That's a nice compilation. I used lists from here: http://www.bckelk.ukfsn.org/menu.html http://www.bckelk.ukfsn.org/menu.html to programmatically compile a list for a similar purpose, and a markov-chain based sentence generator that I didn't use because it could generate sensitive stuff occasionally...
zethraeus 14y ago
This is especially brilliant in this situation because it would make the OP's website invaluable for over the phone debugging - the (unfortunate) situation in which it is most likely to be used. Numeral lists are anathema to phonecalls. Great suggestion.
sylvinus 14y ago
Beware that "walrus" may not be that easy to pronounce by a foreigner :)
- swalberg 14y ago
  Using the 26 letters from the NATO alphabet might be easier, it's made to be intelligible for non-English speakers over a radio connection with static. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NATO_phonetic_alphabet http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NATO_phonetic_alphabet

q_revert 14y ago

works nicely for me in firefox/opera, but doesn't do too well in anything else... although I'd doubt you'd need to worry about them too much, still, it's always nice to see apps like this fail gracefully, if you had a 'this particular browser isn't supported' type message rather than 'something went wrong' http://imgur.com/a/chkc2 http://imgur.com/a/chkc2 broken useragents.. konqueror: Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Konqueror/4.6; Linux) KHTML/4.6.5 (like Gecko) Fedora/4.6.5-8.fc14 seamonkey: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux x86_64; en-US; rv:1.9.1.19) Gecko/20110429 Fedora/2.0.14-1.fc14 SeaMonkey/2.0.14 dillo: dillo/0.8.6 < -- wouldn't worry about that one too much :) epiphany: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux x86_64; en-ie) AppleWebKit/534.16+ (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0 Safari/534.16+ Epiphany/2.30.6 midori: Midori/0.2 (X11; Linux; U; en-ie) WebKit/534.7+

ashastry 14y ago
We have fixed these errors now. Please check it out...

tzaman 14y ago

Too much scrolling for the amount of information given, otherwise, good job!

matan_a 14y ago

It would be great to combine some public data source about browsers together with what you have like, for example, adding information from WURFL: http://wurfl.sourceforge.net/help_doc.php http://wurfl.sourceforge.net/help_doc.php Mind their (new) license tho if you plan to use them specifically. Seems like a great fit so the user does not have to perform their own cross-referencing.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

wldlyinaccurate 14y ago

I don't know how easy it is (or if it's even possible) but it would be really useful to detect what add-ons are enabled. Things like Adblock, Flashblock, cause a lot of trouble and some users don't even know that they have them installed. I also wonder whether it's possible to detect whether Flash is actually enabled. I disable the Flash plugin on Chrome by default, but tools like this generally don't pick up on that.

MartinCron 14y ago
I also wonder whether it's possible to detect whether Flash is actually enabled. You should be able to try to actually do something with a tiny embedded flash application and have that flip a "yes, flash is really on" bit.

mmahemoff 14y ago

Great idea. Would be brilliant if it ran the browser through a battery of capability tests (like HTML5test.com).

klodolph 14y ago

I noticed that it's not at all fazed by user agent spoofing. Nice.

CJefferson 14y ago

You don't make a great use of screen space. On my laptop, the very bottom thing on the page I can see is a giant 'chrome' logo. I initially assumed all you were doing is displaying the icon of my web-browser. 2/3 of the screen height is basically empty, apart from one tiny text box.

antihero 14y ago

Please could you make it so it uses normal scrollbars? Fucking with the scrollbars often breaks stuff.

ashastry 14y ago
We are using normal scrollbars. Can you post a screenshot?
- antihero 14y ago
  Ah, apologies! I posted that on the wrong topic, I meant to post it about that ivory thing.

tshadwell 14y ago

It doesn't differentiate between the various versions of chrome. Chromium, for example has no Google nonsense in it.

msredmond 14y ago

I had to send five "what browser are you using" e-mails just last Friday. And people never send the OS when we ask. Thank you, thank you for making this.

MartinCron 14y ago
One thing that has become standard practice for me is to have any "contact us" forms or error reporting pages automatically include all of this information when sending messages. I also generally record persist the browser information on important "events" such as registration and login, so I can refer to it if I need it later. You don't need it most of the time, but it saves so much time to not have to bother asking for it.

josteink 14y ago

Latest (regular desktop) Chrome on Windows 8 gets reported as Windows NT. I mean.. Sure there's probably quite a bit of remnants from the Windows NT codebase here and there, but it's probably not very useful for reporting to support etc.

artjumble 14y ago

Can you add the info about Flash Player too? Like this: http://playerversion.com/ http://playerversion.com/

derleth 14y ago

500 Errors: Lynx on Linux: https://aboutmybrowser.com/1909674851 https://aboutmybrowser.com/1909674851 w3m on Linux: https://aboutmybrowser.com/1942341369 https://aboutmybrowser.com/1942341369 links on Linux: https://aboutmybrowser.com/3183933151 https://aboutmybrowser.com/3183933151 elinks on Linux: https://aboutmybrowser.com/3918182904 https://aboutmybrowser.com/3918182904 Also, it works just fine on Firefox with NoScript blocking JavaScript from your site.

lemieux 14y ago
Didn't work on Android with native browser for me.
ashastry 14y ago
Hi We have just fixed these errors. Please check it out..

fourstar 14y ago

I gave this out in a suggestion couple weeks ago in #javascript on freenode. Nice job, since this is what I was looking for. Previously was using http://www.mybrowserinfo.com/detail.asp?bhcp=1 http://www.mybrowserinfo.com/detail.asp?bhcp=1

johns 14y ago

Please make the 'Copy Link' button the biggest primary looking thing on the page. Like 48px big big.

cnlwsu 14y ago

Love it, I forwarded it to our QA and support team. One problem seems to be since the url bar is automatically updated (redirect?) with the current results people ended up bookmarking it instead of the just "aboutmybrowser.com" so they saw FF come up as a result in IE and such when opening in other browser.

Steko 14y ago

There's a feature in a few iOS browsers (Atomic, Sleipnir at least) to report as something else to avoid broken mobile sites or whatever. There are a number of firefox add ons that do the same, this one has site specific settings which is exactly what I needed and it works great: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/uacontrol/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/uacontrol/

SeanDav 14y ago

Not a criticism at all but what is the point of this? This is a genuine question, I have no idea why this seems important/interesting enough to be No 1 on HN. What am I missing?

citricsquid 14y ago
I take it you've never done support or tried to fix a users issue? Trying to find out what browser and version a user has can often be like pulling teeth if they're not an experienced internet users; being able to link them to a page and get all the info you need without a miscommunication is a godsend.

ivankirigin 14y ago

The screen size vs monitor size looks incorrect https://aboutmybrowser.com/3056072335 https://aboutmybrowser.com/3056072335 I'm browsing on a second monitor

aleyan 14y ago
I think this is more a function of the browser reporting things poorly in the header. Perhaps some client side javascript can help here? My multi monitor setup reports even wilder results: https://aboutmybrowser.com/1708443426 https://aboutmybrowser.com/1708443426
notatoad 14y ago
It does the same thing for me - i'm browsing on my primary monitor, but it reports the resolution of my leftmost monitor. I'm guessing there isn't much that can be done other than file a bug report with whoever makes your browser.

override 14y ago

You should add pixel density to the output.

newman314 14y ago

Reports webOS incorrectly.

justanotheratom 14y ago

FWIW, some information is not showing up for Metro IE10.

gosu 14y ago

Tried it with Conkeror on Linux: "We're sorry, but something went wrong."

DenisM 14y ago

I would rather ask people to send their inquires through my "contact us" form, wherein I could collect all the data I need. Much less confusing to the user, me thinks...

slykat 14y ago

Now if there was an easy way of showing a user where the address bar is so they can type it in...

jelder 14y ago

It accurately detected that I'm running Safari on OS/2. Pretty great! https://aboutmybrowser.com/4004112543 https://aboutmybrowser.com/4004112543 (Actually, Chrome os iOS, but close enough.)

gsmcnamara 14y ago

Love it!

helentoomik 14y ago

Nice, but it does not work very well for me (Opera on Mac). It reports the browser and OS correctly, but then it claims I do not have JavaScript enabled (which I do). Also when I click Contact support at the bottom, the page gets dimmed out as if for a dialog, but I see no actual dialog anywhere. So somewhere in your JS code there is a bug that makes it fail in Opera. https://aboutmybrowser.com/2079851324 https://aboutmybrowser.com/2079851324

_feda_ 14y ago

Is it possible to identify certain add-ons in firefox even if they aren't in the user agent string, or is that the only information you get from the client? Would be cool if it could tell that I use pentadactyl, stylish, ad-block plus etc. etc.

ddffnn 14y ago

Suggestion: Check the version against the latest release and kindly notify visitors if a newer release is available. Provide the link to make it easy to upgrade. I've often had family and friends ask me why some site or service doesn't work but they don't know if their browsers are up to date. I would love to start by directing them to a site like this and telling them to upgrade if they aren't using the latest version of their browser.

kevin_p 14y ago

Might not work properly for users in China. It's telling me I don't have JavaScript enabled, when I do (Firefox on OSX, no weird extensions), and based on the tab bar icon is still loading after >2 minutes. Perhaps you're loading some blocked-in-China script that's preventing your page load event?

kevin_p 14y ago
Update: The page did eventually load and worked properly. I looked at your page source and found Facebook and Google Plus, which are both blocked here - that would probably be what was stopping it working before. Perhaps you should load these asynchronously, instead of waiting for them to load / time out before updating the information?

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

gulbrandr 14y ago

Related: http://supportdetails.com/ http://supportdetails.com/

countessa 14y ago

nice idea. found it a bit annoying that I had to scroll to get some details that could easily sit above the fold.....i recognise the need for some sort of virality and share-ability, and also that the idea is users will send tech support the link, but perhaps it could be tempered a little and you could push some important details above the fold - for example browser and browser version and javascript on or off.

prateekdayal 14y ago
Thanks for the feedback. We have gotten this feedback from others as well and we will be improving the layout shortly.

prateekdayal 14y ago

We just fixed a bunch of errors and you should see results for android and several other browsers. Please try it out and let us know. We are working on adding more browser icons. Thank you for your patience

xsaero00 14y ago

http://www.whatismybrowser.com/ http://www.whatismybrowser.com/ is nicer looking.