Modifying browser user agent

[55trucker]

W10
Pale Moon33.3
64-bit browser
Noia theme:
Noia, nmatrix, Tab Utilities, Adblock Latitude


Hello there: a question with regards to the browser useragent.....

if one wants to *blanket* every website one goes into to a custom useragent string....how does one enter such string for ALL websites?
I currently use the *Firefox* user agent as entered into the Tools/Preferences/Advanced window........
When one does this the Gecko platform also becomes active as shown in about:config........

But when one looks at the Firefox useragent version that shows in the majority of the individual entries below the useragent compatability mode...Firefox version 102 is displayed for most of them & a few entries display an entry as old as Firefox 68 & NOT the current version 128....
version 102 is more than 2 years old, I am having an issue where a few of the websites I make use of on a regular basis (such as my online banking, also the federal gov website) all deliver the message *browser unsupported*...
these 2 & a few more will flat out not recognize Pale Moon as a legitimate browser...

here is the useragent I found online for Firefox 128 that I have manually entered into a few of the entries such as *addons mozilla.org*
general.useragent.override.addons.mozilla.org;Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:128.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/128

how does one blanket the useragent with this string?

[vannilla]

You're better off changing the user agent only for the websites that do not work, as doing so for every place actually cause more things to break.
Sasuga and PermissionsPlus are graphical interfaces to the mechanism to do so.

[55trucker]

If Firefox is a more acceptable browser *generally speaking*...(it's not my 1st choice) wouldn't it be better to default everything to the Firefox useragent.....BUT a current version of Firefox?

[vannilla]

If Firefox is a more acceptable browser *generally speaking*...(it's not my 1st choice) wouldn't it be better to default everything to the Firefox useragent.....BUT a current version of Firefox?

No, it is not better.
Pale Moon does not support the same Javascript features Firefox has, for the most part due to being a small team not subsidized by Google's money, and explicitly telling websites that Pale Moon is either not Firefox or an older version of it, increases the chances of being given code without the unsupported parts.
That is why you should override the user agent string only on a case by case basis.

[55trucker]

Yeah, well, I haven't liked what the developers over there did to move away from an XUL platform, this web extension approach isn't appreciated by many & makes developing complete themes a no win situation.
Major reason why I moved to Pale Moon 8 years ago, and I don't want to move away from Pale Moon, having to make use of the userChrome file & learning to write stylesheet script to make simple cosmetic alterations is a

I have already dl'ed Sasuga & started to populate it with *sensitive* sites .....I do have some 2700 accumulated bookmark links

[moonbat]

You should also not change the user agent out of some sense of protecting privacy - there are many other ways for sites to fingerprint your browser and as vannilla said, sending the wrong user-agent will only result in the site breaking due to expecting features that PM doesn't support.
Change the user agent only if a site complains about an unsupported browser, you can find user-agent overrides for most popular sites by searching the forum. Some of them already have overrides in place.

[Moonchild]

If you feel 102.0 is "too old" and want to experiment with giving a newer Firefox version in the Firefox Compatibility Mode for the user agent, find general.useragent.compatMode.version in about:config and set it to the Firefox version you want it to present.

[andyprough]

I have already dl'ed Sasuga & started to populate it with *sensitive* sites

For anti-fingerprinting, Pale Moon does have a fantastic "canvas.poisondata" option in about:config which changes your fingerprint on all sites (need to set it to 'true'). You can control the frequency of the fingerprint change by assigning a number of seconds to the "canvas.poisondata.interval" config option (default is 300 seconds/5 minutes). I'm pretty sure that this is one of the unique features of Pale Moon, specifically designed by Moonchild.

[55trucker]

You should also not change the user agent out of some sense of protecting privacy - there are many other ways for sites to fingerprint your browser and as vannilla said, sending the wrong user-agent will only result in the site breaking due to expecting features that PM doesn't support.
Change the user agent only if a site complains about an unsupported browser, you can find user-agent overrides for most popular sites by searching the forum. Some of them already have overrides in place.

Don't misunderstand me, I'm not worried about privacy at all, but where the sent info to any website is concerned what sort of variation in *features* would there be from browser to browser?

[55trucker]

If you feel 102.0 is "too old" and want to experiment with giving a newer Firefox version in the Firefox Compatibility Mode for the user agent, find general.useragent.compatMode.version in about:config and set it to the Firefox version you want it to present.

Hi there:

I did this shortly before making this thread, wasn't sure whether this approach would be effective for all websites (altered the setting to Firefox 128), but if you state that this will then would one still need to *mask* the browsers user agent to prevent any particular website from delivering the message *browser not supported?

[55trucker]

I have already dl'ed Sasuga & started to populate it with *sensitive* sites

For anti-fingerprinting, Pale Moon does have a fantastic "canvas.poisondata" option in about:config which changes your fingerprint on all sites (need to set it to 'true'). You can control the frequency of the fingerprint change by assigning a number of seconds to the "canvas.poisondata.interval" config option (default is 300 seconds/5 minutes). I'm pretty sure that this is one of the unique features of Pale Moon, specifically designed by Moonchild.

Wasn't aware of this....thx very much
where this is concerned......does one go longer or shorter on the interval?

[vannilla]

Don't misunderstand me, I'm not worried about privacy at all, but where the sent info to any website is concerned what sort of variation in *features* would there be from browser to browser?

Some web mail providers might give you a version of the interface aimed at "old" devices that is usually better/faster than the default one, because they assume that you are lacking feature so-and-so.
Certain websites stop working entirely because they do not load some "polyfill" that would otherwise be there to provide what's missing.
There are probably some others, but I forgot. If you search this very forum you can find real examples with real websites.

[Moonchild]

wasn't sure whether this approach would be effective for all websites (altered the setting to Firefox 128), but if you state that this will then would one still need to *mask* the browsers user agent to prevent any particular website from delivering the message *browser not supported?

That depends entirely on each individual website and which "checks" they perform. Some site will only accept very specific versions of Chrome or Firefox user agents. Some don't care at all. We aren't Firefox; the compatibility user agent is a "best effort" we can do to make most sites happy, but some will never be and require site-specific overrides.

[55trucker]

wasn't sure whether this approach would be effective for all websites (altered the setting to Firefox 128), but if you state that this will then would one still need to *mask* the browsers user agent to prevent any particular website from delivering the message *browser not supported?

That depends entirely on each individual website and which "checks" they perform. Some site will only accept very specific versions of Chrome or Firefox user agents. Some don't care at all. We aren't Firefox; the compatibility user agent is a "best effort" we can do to make most sites happy, but some will never be and require site-specific overrides.

I take it that the federal gov website here & the developers of the website are going to the effort to *check* the web browser & that server only likes Edge, Chrome, Firefox but is prejudice against Pale Moon.

Yahoo....

[moonbat]

but is prejudice against Pale Moon.

More likely they don't bother testing on anything other than Chrome; even Firefox is known to break on various govt (not just American) sites.

[55trucker]

Well, I'll follow your suggestions, just have to be patient & note if any of the *affected* sites respond in some sort of positive manner.

Thx all......

[andyprough]

For anti-fingerprinting, Pale Moon does have a fantastic "canvas.poisondata" option in about:config which changes your fingerprint on all sites (need to set it to 'true'). You can control the frequency of the fingerprint change by assigning a number of seconds to the "canvas.poisondata.interval" config option (default is 300 seconds/5 minutes). I'm pretty sure that this is one of the unique features of Pale Moon, specifically designed by Moonchild.

Wasn't aware of this....thx very much
where this is concerned......does one go longer or shorter on the interval?

The default 5 minutes has been working pretty good for me for a few months. I would personally leave it there unless I noticed a problem with a particular website where I needed to randomize the fingerprint data less frequently for the site to work correctly.

[frostknight]

More likely they don't bother testing on anything other than Chrome; even Firefox is known to break on various govt (not just American) sites.

Chrome supposedly is trying to push a webextensions version where you cannot block ads anymore.

Which just goes to show, Chrome is not worth endorsing as an idea.

It is utterly trash. Makes the current firefox look like a saint by comparison.