User Agent Changes

Catweazle

Hello @andyt_at , the page I know is Google Sites, the new format does not accept Vivaldi to edit. In the forum there is a thread with other examples.

andyt_at

Thank you for response.

@Gwen-Dragon According to my knowledge, every JS is running directly on the webbrowser. HTTP header is a smart way for server to detect that. Maybe not the best at all, but less traffic and scripts through web connection.

@Gwen-Dragon What do you mean? You mean examples which don't work fine if Vivaldi send normal UA?

zakius

Opera uses Opera properly, it's useless chropera that sends OPR
"There is a downside for us in doing this since Vivaldi will effectively disappear from third party rankings of browser popularity"
most of people use proper blockers anyway so you aren't getting counted by client sided scripts

Fang

I remember old day when I used Opera and I had to change User Agent to get new version of Google services or I get old map or mail and docs not working at all... BTW. In old Opera you could change User Agent in options. Can this be changed in vivaldi without installing the extension?

Pesala

@Fang You can fake the user agent by opening developers tools (F12); in the 3 vertical dots menu select Network conditions;
User agent, uncheck Select Automatically, and then select "Chrome - Windows."

rseiler

Even new Edge is subject to shenanigans:
https://twitter.com/teroalhonen/status/1206301834907934736

That's from google.com....

newscpq

@pathduck: exactly, didn't we?

newscpq

@pathduck: anyway, UA spoofing is such a basic feature and easy to understand, that I really don't know why it shouldn't be possible to set it as we like it: Vivaldi is all about customisation, so I don't see why we should all pretend to be Chrome. We should be given the choice to appear online as we like.
I spent all my browsing life manually spoofing UA: I really could switch to Firefox, for this reason.

burnout426

Ideally, there should be a global "Remove Vivaldi from User-Agent" option that defaults to enabled. Then, there should be a "Remove Vivaldi from User-Agent" site preference that defaults to inheriting the global setting with the option to explicitly enable/disable to override the global on per-site basis. Vivaldi could then have default site prefs for the good sites where "Remove Vivaldi from User-Agent" is explicitly set to disabled (but you could still change it if you wanted). Too bad Chromium doesn't support adding these settings as a build option for 3rd-party builds. Opera, Brave and Edge could do it too then.

It'd be pushing it, but it'd also be nice to have a User-Agent string value setting. The default would be "Default" which would be the normal Vivaldi user-agent or whatever the --user-agent command-line switch sets it to. The "Remove Vivaldi from User-Agent" setting would work with this. The non-default setting would be "custom" where you put the string you want there. You would then have a site pref override for the string too.

Catweazle

@Gwen-Dragon , calendar site works for me, but maybe this also helps
https://www.computerbild.de/download/Fotokalender-erstellen-und-ausdrucken-16733019.html

A Former User

@burnout426 said in User Agent Changes:

It'd be pushing it, but it'd also be nice to have a User-Agent string value setting.

…with escapes for versions and environment (would you want to change it after every upgrade and every time you decide to use it on a different OS?)…

Ha, I knew that it was too good to be real. But why did I have to see this dream?

Catweazle

@Gwen-Dragon , I have not finished creating a calendar, being a paid service, but I have been able to design. The only problem was that it was extraordinarily slow.
The other pages I put work perfectly, although you must print the calendar yourself. It may be an alternative (use matte photo paper for this)

mossman

@burnout426 that was my first thought too when seeing this blog post. "Why not set default to spoof as Chrome but have a settings option to identify as Vivaldi instead...?"

Then, to check for user agent issues, have a toggle in the quick commands to switch the current session between Chrome/Vivaldi...

Ruarí

@mossman I fail to see how that would help unless we were planning to go back to using a Vivaldi UA

Blackbird

@ruario Perhaps it revolves around one's thinking about Vivaldi's "vision" for how it markets itself. Some loyal users possibly want to more directly 'help' raise Vivaldi's presence in marketshare stats and to identify/encourage sites that block Vivaldi to remove those blocks. On the other hand, perhaps Vivaldi feels that isn't a battle worth fighting.

A Former User

@ruario Don't forget the philosophy: adapting to users' needs. (I didn't want to say this just to support my opinion, but that's maybe what I needed to…) It would help your users that want Vivaldi to identify self as Vivaldi (or — OK — Crivaldi) and not as Chrome. You don't have to plan it right now, but we plan it (and if you don't restrict --user-agent and mods, we can do it).

Ruarí

@potmeklecbohdan Having a tiny minority, of a browser that is itself still relatively small, identify as Vivaldi will not succeed in fixing the fundamentally flawed problems with User Agents. All it will mean is that it is easier for you as user to be fingerprinted.

Ruarí

@Blackbird

[…] perhaps Vivaldi feels that isn't a battle worth fighting.

It isn't. There are far more important things to worry about than user agents

rseiler

~~Is it intentional that the --user-agent override switch is itself overridden? That doesn't matter to me now, and maybe to no one, but I mention it in case it's unintended.~~

My mistake

burnout426

@rseiler said in User Agent Changes:

Is it intentional that the --user-agent override switch is itself overridden?

Was just testing and it doesn't seem to be overridden to me. vivaldi.exe --user-agent=bla works for example. A string with Vivaldi/2.9.1705.41 in it works fine too and doesn't get stripped. I checked on multiple sites that detect your user agent and check navigator.userAgent in the console.

For example:

vivaldi.exe "--user-agent=Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/79.0.3945.94 Safari/537.36 Vivaldi/2.10.1745.18"

works fine.