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It appears website developers desperately want to return to a world where browsers actively pretend to be another browser*. Want to check for DBSC? Enjoy not k

It appears website developers desperately want to return to a world where browsers actively pretend to be another browser*. Want to check for DBSC? Enjoy not knowing whether the browser vendor decided to just roll a simple software implementation. Nothing good comes from browser detection over feature detection anyways. It's time to do away with user-agents and other overt identifying markers, and if we're still not in a better place, aggressively start stubbing features. * to some degree they still are. Firefox still ships with an user-agent override list for certain websites that have outdated user-agent sniffing for feature detection (and other fixes in about:compat).

pjmlp 4mo ago
You mean the same that gave Chrome its market share, by adopting ChromeOS features, and shipping Electron apps?
JoeAltmaier 4mo ago
And yet, claiming support for a feature doesn't tell all. Different implementations can have subtle differences. Knowing the browser and version can allow a client to survive that.
- chmod775 4mo ago
  Yes, that is the price developers will have to pay. Development will be harder, but users are going to prefer somewhat broken sites over being outright refused entry. At the end of the day user-preference is what dictates which browser is used and how it is configured. Developers will have to deal with what users choose to do on their end. You can only patronize people for so long before they look for a way around silly restrictions. Trying to keep someone safe by putting up walls, whether the threat is real or imaginary, is pointless when it is in the user's power to trivially defeat those walls - and when extension and browser developers are going to line up to sell them demolition tools (see ad blocking). Advice is going to go much further than roadblocks, long term.
  - pjmlp 4mo ago
    We used to deal with what browsers users chose on their end, then came IE market dominance. After the lawsuit against Microsoft, and the raise of Firefox, Safari and Chrome we had it all good again. Then devs had to get comfy with Google offerings, including shipping Chrome packaged with their pseudo native applications.
edoceo 4mo ago
What is the process to aggressively stub features? Does that mean pushing patches to Firefox and/or Ladybird and/or Servo?
ThatMedicIsASpy 4mo ago
Cloudflare blocked me with a chrome windows useragent on Firefox+Fedora
- neop1x 4mo ago
  Happens to me too. They are probably able to infer it is not a Chrome from the TLS handshake or they run their javascript fingerprinting and found out that the browser didn't have some Chrome features or behaved differently. Sadly, it is much more difficult to pretend being on a different browser than it was in the past. :/

pjmlp 4mo ago

You mean the same that gave Chrome its market share, by adopting ChromeOS features, and shipping Electron apps?

JoeAltmaier 4mo ago

And yet, claiming support for a feature doesn't tell all. Different implementations can have subtle differences. Knowing the browser and version can allow a client to survive that.

chmod775 4mo ago
Yes, that is the price developers will have to pay. Development will be harder, but users are going to prefer somewhat broken sites over being outright refused entry. At the end of the day user-preference is what dictates which browser is used and how it is configured. Developers will have to deal with what users choose to do on their end. You can only patronize people for so long before they look for a way around silly restrictions. Trying to keep someone safe by putting up walls, whether the threat is real or imaginary, is pointless when it is in the user's power to trivially defeat those walls - and when extension and browser developers are going to line up to sell them demolition tools (see ad blocking). Advice is going to go much further than roadblocks, long term.
- pjmlp 4mo ago
  We used to deal with what browsers users chose on their end, then came IE market dominance. After the lawsuit against Microsoft, and the raise of Firefox, Safari and Chrome we had it all good again. Then devs had to get comfy with Google offerings, including shipping Chrome packaged with their pseudo native applications.

edoceo 4mo ago

What is the process to aggressively stub features? Does that mean pushing patches to Firefox and/or Ladybird and/or Servo?

ThatMedicIsASpy 4mo ago

Cloudflare blocked me with a chrome windows useragent on Firefox+Fedora

neop1x 4mo ago
Happens to me too. They are probably able to infer it is not a Chrome from the TLS handshake or they run their javascript fingerprinting and found out that the browser didn't have some Chrome features or behaved differently. Sadly, it is much more difficult to pretend being on a different browser than it was in the past. :/