[11429] in www-talk@info.cern.ch
Re: user agent label format
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Koen Holtman)
Tue Sep 14 12:35:37 1999
From: koen@win.tue.nl (Koen Holtman)
To: connolly@w3.org (Dan Connolly)
Date: Tue, 14 Sep 1999 18:27:33 +0200 (MET DST)
Cc: dberansky@ucsd.edu, www-talk@w3.org
In-Reply-To: <37DD4E0C.FD7B738F@w3.org> from "Dan Connolly" at Sep 13, 99 02:18:36 pm
Resent-From: www-talk@w3.org
Dan Connolly:
>
>Dmitry Beransky wrote:
>>
>> It seems that despite the fact that most agents (at least the ones I pulled
>> off my server logs) follow the format specified in the HTTP spec, it's
>> still impossible to determine with 100% accuracy the agent's make, model,
>> os platform, etc., since most of this info is stored in an unstructured
>> comment field. Is there any work done on trying to further standardize the
>> agent data?
>
>Not that I'm aware of.
Some additional observations: the HTTP spec implies that the
User-Agent field is free-form, and in at least one browser (Lynx), the
end users can set this field to anything they want.
This implies to me that developing a standard format for the User-Agent
field is a lost cause. The best hope with respect to reliable browser
identification is the wide deployment of one of the content negotiation
mechanisms referenced elsewhere in this thread.
>Dan Connolly, W3C
Koen.
