7 ms·

Good. User-Agent detection has always been a hack.

• fwr 14y ago
  How is this good? How is this considered to be a hack? You make this sound like something that can be achieved in a more sophisticated way. How?
  • nerd_in_rage 14y ago
    It's good because it's not something that should be done. Ask yourself why you need to detect the user agent.
    • ronancremin 14y ago
      Why? Because it can help improve the user experience (page payload, image sizes etc). There's a good reason why Google, Facebook, Netflix, eBay, Yahoo, BBC, Amazon etc. do it. It's also part of RFC 1945 (HTTP 1.0) and RFC 2616 (RFC 1.1). Not exactly a hack -- it's designed into the HTTP protocol since 1996.
    • chris_wot 14y ago
      To allow folks to read legible text. To ensure that elements aren't that small you tap on the wrong thing. To provide a reasonable user experience to your audience. How exactly would you resolve the problem?