Chrome is deprecating the User Agent string

[Lootyhoof]

...only to replace it with something else:

https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.or ... e4tQNLCgAJ

Isn't feature churn fun?

[Moonraker]

Which in turn will have a detrimental effect on websites.?

[Moonchild]

The irony is that Google is one of the worst offenders of the bad User Agent Sniffing practice

[vannilla]

I only read the proposal (i.e. the first message in the linked discussion), but it seems to simply be a more complex version of the existing User Agent string.
Aside from actually implementing it, I doubt it will magically make websites more compatible. If anything, I'm expecting the worst in that one of those hints is something like the browser name and websites are going to explicitly check on that rather than actual features given by the other hints.

[moonbat]

Gotta love how casually they list out a timetable to implement this. No need to submit it to a standards body when you control the standard itself. Microsoft during the IE6 days seems so naive and cuddly by comparison.

[athenian200]

My understanding is that they're planning to freeze it, not simply remove it. Also, it seems that near the end of the article, they say that relying on feature detection would be a better practice than UA sniffing. I can't really find fault with that argument.

Not that I trust their intentions here, but most of what they're saying seems technically valid. I do have a bad feeling about the new UA-CH standard they're proposing here, though.

[Andrew Herbert]

I guess it's a good thing. Maybe some Firefox fanboys will see that since Google controls web standards (and Mozilla), it doesn't make much difference for Google if websites use UA sniffing. Therefore, using Firefox won't save the web.

[moonbat]

Therefore, using Firefox won't save the web.

Off-topic:
That ship sailed in 2011 with the introduction of Australis.

[New Tobin Paradigm]

Australis happened in 2014.

[vannilla]

This became a draft: https://wicg.github.io/ua-client-hints/

I like section 5.2, it really speaks a lot about trends in web development.

[Moonchild]

And of course 4.1 is there to log-roll the deprecation of http.

And ultimately it makes no difference if you're just replacing it with something else -- they will just sniff the client-hints and do the same checks anyway they are doing now and it is in NO way improving anything -- just making change for the sake of change.

[bgstack15]

Egh. Now there's even more fields that server admins have to parse to make sure their pages are served in some semblance of readability because the devs got weird with their web-based product. It was bad enough with the IE 4 useragent check for apache back in the day.

[John connor]

Without reading all that, how do websites use a Chrome UA in the future to either direct them to their mobile version or their desktop version of a website? I know in CloudFlare there is an option to do just that.

[Moonchild]

how do websites use a Chrome UA in the future

By checking different headers that have the same info (formatted differently) that's currently in the user-agent string.
And if you want to know more, you DO have to read it.

[John connor]

What are the different headers? I'm wondering now that even though I forge my UA to look like the latest FF and Win 10, I still have a hell of a time with Recaptcha and it simply won't solve under PM. So maybe, just maybe Google is grabbing some other header and if I can modify those as well perhaps I won't get the Recaptcha discrimination crap. And no, I'm not staying logged into a Google account just for the sake of a once in a while Recaptcha. Especially since I always log out of websites and never store cookies and cache.

[vannilla]

The list of the new UA hints headers is located here: https://wicg.github.io/ua-client-hints/
It also has a number of useful informations.

[John connor]

Good grief that's a lot of crap that this code stupid user has no idea about. Would it make sense to perhaps have someone crafty enough to code up a Pale Moon only extension to satisfy all these headers so that Google will shut up and just allow the solving of Recaptcha. If the headers are the only metric that Google is using, then Recaptcha problems would be a thing of the past with PM. As it stands now I always have to pull out my plain vanilla FF install just to get past a form entry guarded with a Recaptcha. And sometimes I'm met with one and not expect it, so all that I entered into the website with PM was a waste of time only to have to launch FF to enter the Info. into the form once again so I can pass Recaptcha.

I really wish websites wouldn't gravitate towards Google crap for their ant-spam bot needs. It's one reason I'll never use it for my site. And I saw my captcha in action block potential bad traffic in the access logs. They'd get a 200 and that was it. Yet this captcha isn't very code complex or anything. Just word arrangements using a mouse. eBay has their own which is not Google crap thank God.

[Isengrim]

If the headers are the only metric that Google is using, then Recaptcha problems would be a thing of the past with PM.

UA isn't the only thing Google uses to determine how reCaptcha functions. If the new "UA hints" can still be spoofed (i.e. a user, bot, or attacker can put whatever they want in those fields regardless of whether the information is correct) then I doubt this proposal will affect reCaptcha either.

I believe the intent of this UA hint system is to simply make the UA more machine-readable than the current mess we have. Whether it really solves anything remains to be seen, as it mostly depends on whether sites respect or ignore the new hints.

[New Tobin Paradigm]

I think it is to negate our site specific user agent override system because it doesn't resolve or fix anything for the monoculture because the five flavors of chrome are gonna support everything all the time within a week or two of each other regardless.

Feature detection remains the only real solution and almost no one does this.

[Moonchild]

Feature detection remains the only real solution and almost no one does this.

I was hopeful that Chrome deprecating the UA would mean a push for sniffers to do feature detections instead but no... having the "client hints" instead just means they will be sniffing THAT instead and still not do feature detection.