Comments on: Day 9: ua.ini

By: jmd2121

jmd2121 — Sun, 19 Feb 2006 05:14:12 +0000

opera has to catch up with the times. firefox now allows arbitrary userid strings. it's turning into an issue now as many websites are allowing significant content differences based on user agent string.

((TjL adds: What sites? I'd like to know what sites are really blocking Internet Explorer))

For example, I'd like to have Googlebot/2.1 (+http://www.google.com/bot.html) on my list of available user agent strings as many sites allow unfettered access to googlebot.

I'd also rather stay with opera than use firefox

((TjL adds: Just because I'd like unfettered access to your checking account, does that mean I should get it?))

By: TjL (tntluoma.com)

TjL (tntluoma.com) — Wed, 26 Oct 2005 22:31:25 +0000

Source: http://snapshot.opera.com/windows/w90p1.html

"Changed default UserAgent string to identify as Opera."

By: Bernd Matzner

Bernd Matzner — Wed, 26 Oct 2005 22:20:37 +0000

The stupid thing is that because of Opera identifying itself as IE it totally messes up web statistics. I think a reason why Opera to this day isn’t taken seriously is that it ranks so low in web stats. Why bother taking 0.8% of the user agents into account when testing pages? I think today - with lots more standards-compliant websites around, it might be a good move to change that setting so it identifies itself as Opera by default.

By: Filbo

Filbo — Wed, 12 Oct 2005 09:01:16 +0000

This userjs script attempts to masquerade "completely". It should work for many sites which aren't fooled by Opera's standard ua.ini choices. It still won't help sites which use browser and JS features which are absent in Opera. A few sites may use object detection of those features, so they'll still detect and reject Opera.

Bela attempts to masquerade "completely". It should work for many sites which aren't fooled by Opera's standard ua.ini choices. It still won't help sites which use browser and JS features which are absent in Opera. A few sites may use object detection of those features, so they'll still detect and reject Opera.

Bela<

By: Alvin Brinson

Alvin Brinson — Tue, 20 Sep 2005 20:16:49 +0000

This is useless for sites that identify the browser through JavaScript.

Why hasn't Opera come around and made an option to masquerade completely?

Until they do, any site that uses JavaScript to detect, such as the DSL portal at http://dsl.sbc.yahoo.com/ will fail to work no matter what.

See Here:

http://www.broadbandreports.com/forum/remark,14402348~mode=full~days=9999~start=20

By: Martin

Martin — Thu, 15 Sep 2005 10:33:47 +0000

I didn't get what Stuarts Problem was.

Having an Button for changing the UA-String is no Problem:

press "Shift+F12" go to "Buttons", and then you have 2 possibilities: a Dropdown-Field, found under "Preferences" and an "Identify as"-Field found under "Status".

The Dropdown-Field lets you select the UA directly, the "Status"-Field changes with every click (i prefer that one, because it fits better into my opery-skin).

That is sufficient for most of the Websites (until now i found only gettyimages.com which still told me to get another browser)

Unfortunately the UA-Strings 4 und 5 (Mozilla/IE without any mention of Opera) aren't accessible through the userinterface, and i don't now if there is any possibility of changing this.

Martin, with gettyimages.com now working fine after ua.ini-tuning

By: Ruari

Ruari — Tue, 02 Aug 2005 10:47:37 +0000

0 = Still under the control of F12 or Tools/Preferences/Advanced/Network

1 = Overrides F12 & TPAN and sends: Opera/8.02 (Windows NT 5.0; U; en)

2 = Overrides F12 & TPAN and sends: Mozilla/4.78 (Windows NT 5.0; U; en) Opera 8.02

3 = Overrides F12 & TPAN and sends: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.0; en) Opera 8.02

4 = Overrides F12 & TPAN and sends: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 5.0; U; en; rv:1.7.5) Gecko/20041110

5 = Overrides F12 & TPAN and sends: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.0; en)

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By: TjL (tntluoma.com)

TjL (tntluoma.com) — Mon, 04 Jul 2005 06:22:45 +0000

Jack - see http://nontroppo.org/wiki/ImprovedCompatibility

By: Jack

Jack — Sun, 03 Jul 2005 22:38:27 +0000

I just checked my ua.ini file. I have the line:

"www.sony.com=0"

What brower does "0" represent?

By: TjL (tntluoma.com)

TjL (tntluoma.com) — Sun, 12 Jun 2005 02:33:10 +0000

Stuart - that's a great idea. I wish there was a way to do that, if for no other reason than to see if the site would work better with a spoofed UA.

Unfortunately there's no way to do that (at least none that I am aware of).