Bertrand wrote on May 31: > I've just committed a prototype using a "dynamic probes" technique > which detects device features using client-side javascript, and makes > that available both on the client and server sides.
My one big question related to this technique is how do you plan to definitively link UA (e.g. a *browser*) to a particular device? I originally came at this problem as a device-detection solution. I saw Detector as a good way of sourcing data without relying on... existing solutions. I envisioned a solution where all of the UA profiles sourced with Detector [1] could be put into a GitHub repo and people could put in pull requests and pull data whenever they wanted. Maybe I just didn't know enough but I quickly gave up with device-detection or, rather, trying to organize by device and moved to calling what I was doing simply browser- and feature-detection and organizing by unique UA. Lots of overlap but less thinking on my part ;) As an example of where I think their may be a disconnect between device- and browser-detection is a complaint someone sent to me about their Detector profile. One of the features I test for is touch event support. The commenter noted that their N9 was a touch device but I was reporting it as false. I had to point out that there's a difference between touch as input on a device and touch as the browser sees it and can act on it. As a developer I'm more worried about the latter than the former. Is there a relatively easy way to link UA to device? Or does this technique point towards a more generic, browser map as opposed to a device map? [1] 1000+ Detector profiles for a low traffic website - http://detector.dmolsen.com/archive.php -- http://dmolsen.com
