User Agent Changes
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Naturally it is always preferable that all web pages accept Vivaldi and therefore a different UA at the end perhaps it is not the best way to eliminate this discriminatory and idiotic browser sniffing.
Therefore, although I have a UA switcher, I usually avoid the sites where I need to use it as much as possible, because I see this behavior of this website as a direct insult to the user and therefore I do not deserve any trust.
It seems good to me that Vivaldi now intends to automatically hide in these pages, although I consider that perhaps it is not the best way to eliminate this practice from the network, although it shows that Vivaldi is next to the user offering this, ok, “sacrifice” in favor of the user. -
By the way, why does Vivaldi expose the full build number (even to those specific sites)?
Why not display Vivaldi 2.10 instead of Vivaldi 2.10.1745.1? -
@madiso For random sites on the web, that might be fine.
In the case of vivaldi.com, and vivaldi.net, knowing the full build number is useful as it allows the website to prompt you if you need to download a recent security patch for an out-of-date version. It may also influence behind-the-scenes things such as if you're trying to use sync on different versions.
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@LonM That's not something any site should do, even manifacturer's - that's the client's job. The site can tell if it is old enough by the major number, minor number and critical patches must be presented strictly in the client's UI.
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@potmeklecbohdan: Well, if you want to show the world you use Vivaldi, just set up any "UA switcher" extension to show "Vivaldi + version" at the end of the string.
I personally think that is fine. Brave doesn't have it own UA, and Opera spoof itself to chrome in many sites (like on facebook) -
On a related note, whatever problems we might have with user agents (and they're certainly almost non-existent as of v79) are but a mere blip compared to what the Firefox team just did:
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I'm sad to hear that. I mean especially in relation to the not so free and open World Wide Web. It seems to me, MS used a similar announcement to restart Edge-development with Chromium.
However, is it possible to adjust that option to extend it for more websites, which will be get the correct UA? I own and support some websites and want get the correct string.
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@potmeklecbohdan: Sorry I don't follow
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@rseiler: I had a look and yes, they appear to be doing something similar. You can see this by loading duckduckgo and checking the headers on the first request. You find the word Brave in there right before the Chrome.
If I load another sight like elg.no their is no mention of Brave. Just a straight Chrome-like UA.
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@potmeklecbohdan: To pretend to be other browsers. This makes sense to the web devs that alter their sites based on UA (even if that is a bad move).
In an ideal world UA switches should not be needed by normal users. This change helps bring that closer to reality.
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@ian-coog: Indeed!
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I think that a UA switcher should only be useful in private browsing, if you want to have the browser and system hidden too.
In everything else it is absurd.
But the network is obviously owned by large companies and not at all public and free -
Their solution appears to less complete than ours however. I noticed that DDG sometimes displays Chrome instructions for setting the default browser, rather than Brave ones. This appears to be because they only set one of the two UA for their whitelisted sites. We on the other hand set both.
For those who did not know there are two ways of checking a browser UA. There is a header and a JS property
navigator.userAgent
. You need to set both to really change your UA because websites can read one or the other of both to work out who you are. -
@madiso: That is all well and good until autoupdate breaks for some reason (which has happened to us in the past with macOS), then it is handy to have a fallback method.
In addition knowing the exact version number is handy for people reporting bugs to our bug tracker.
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@potmeklecbohdan: Which browser will you switch to? Which modern/supported browser has a UA that does not include the UA of at least one other browser.
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@lonm said:
That won't fix the main problem. It will make user agent a bit cleaner and remove the need for all the fluff.
But it won't stop people blocking browsers arbitrarily.
As I said, we are “keeping our eye on it”. This will likely evolve and we can also choose to what extent we would implement such a thing anyway.
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@madiso: Because then snapshots cannot be differentiated. This matters because for bug reports one bug might be present in one snapshot and gone in the next. It also helps for any Vivaldi specific instructions. The UA changes between snapshots after all, so help can be tailed on a more fine grained level if you know the exact version.
That said, yes there is a case to be made for limiting it further for some of the sites in the list that get the full UA and perhaps we should consider that in the future.
For now I am not too worried the sites added are ours and four search engines. Three of which are privacy focused and all four have very good reputations. Personally I am not fearful of fingerprinting from them and in any case the situation for them is no different from the previous snapshots. They didn't gain more information (everyone else just got less).
But sure it is something to consider and I think we are open it the idea of limiting it further if there are concerns.
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@ruario said in User Agent Changes:
Which browser will you switch to? Which modern/supported browser has a UA that does not include the UA of at least one other browser.
Well, I stopped the need to switch cause I got what I wanted. And it's still different if the UA includes UA of another browser or if it's exactly the same.
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@andyt_at: You can always open tickets in Vivaldi's bug tracker. Developers requesting UAs with valid reasons can be added to the whitelist now.
Which shows the whole point here: Before it was Vivaldi who had to skim the net and blacklist every abuse. Now developers can request to be whitelisted.- Less fingerprinting -> more privacy
- Less work for Vivaldi -> more time for new features
- Less website issues -> more love for Vivaldi
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this was a good and inteligent move