[Webkit-unassigned] [Bug 12854] Allow FrameLoaderClient to override navigator.appVersion

[bugzilla-daemon at webkit.org]

http://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=12854





------- Comment #6 from darin at apple.com  2007-02-23 08:48 PDT -------
(In reply to comment #4)
> For example, if you look at the browser detection code on eonline.com, it has
> several problems. Last I tried it, it choked when it detected WebKit on Linux.
> Also, it checks for specific strings.

Lets dig into this eonline.com case.

First of all, it's entirely a user agent check, so not at all relevant to a
discussion of separately changing appVersion to be different from the user
agent. The site doesn't look at appVersion at all.

The site's check is for "applewebkit/", which is the correct way to identify
WebKit.

I don't think the way to fix this is to have a version of WebKit that leaves
WebKit out of the user agent string!

It's unfortunate that eonline.com fails when the user agent string contains the
substring "linux". You should try to get the site fixed, and also, if you
really want to spoof to make the site work, I suggest a user agent string that
doesn't contain "linux" or "x11" in it.

> Since have a WebKit-based browser returning "webkit safari" might be considered a trademark violation

That's a straw man. I agree that a non-Safari browser should not include the
string Safari in its user agent string. But the string you cite, "webkit
safari", is part of the eonline.com website, not a string supplied by WebKit.

This is *not* a trademark violation.

> the next best thing is to masquerade as FireFox.

1) That's a really bad strategy for the long term. We want sites to check for
WebKit. We don't want some versions of WebKit to masquerade as Firefox in a way
that's different from other versions of WebKit. Long term, these kinds of
differences between different versions of WebKit are bad for all of us using
WebKit.

2) This has nothing to do with appVersion.

I think this patch is a bad idea.


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