UA gotta be kidding
Brian recounts the sordid messy history of user-agent strings.
I remember somebody once describing a user-agent string as “a reverse-chronological history of web browsers.”
Windows 10 Technical Preview IE UA String
I love Lyza’s comment on the par-for-the-course user-agent string of Microsoft’s brand new Spartan browser:
There must be an entire field emerging: UA archaeologist and lore historian. It’s starting to read like the “begats” in the bible. All browsers much connect their lineage to Konqueror or face a lack-of-legitimacy crisis!
Related links
Intent to Deprecate and Freeze: The User-Agent string - Google Groups
Excellent news! All the major browsers have agreed to freeze their user-agent strings, effectively making them a relic (which they kinda always were).
For many (most?) uses of UA sniffing today, a better tool for the job would be to use feature detection.
The Mobile Web should just work for everyone - IEBlog
One more reason why you should never sniff user-agent strings: Internet Explorer is going to lie some more. Can’t really blame them though—if developers didn’t insist on making spurious conclusions based on information in the user-agent string, then browsers wouldn’t have to lie.
Oh, and Internet Explorer is going to parse -webkit prefixed styles. Again, if developers hadn’t abused vendor prefixes, we wouldn’t be in this mess.