Bijan Parsia <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On Fri, 9 Nov 2001, Lex Spoon wrote: > > > > > > In any case, you could always modify the Swiki to detect Scamper and send > > > a slightly modified project, either in the normal superswikish way, or > > > with slightly enhanced "publish" buttons. > > > > Oh, please don't! The Project Swiki is already doing the right thing > > and giving very clear instructions to the browser on what to do, and > > Scamper could certainly follow those instructions. Having the *server* > > figure this out means you have to constantly modify the server as new > > browsers come out. > [snip] > > True, but so? :) Detecting user-agent is something of a hack, but it can > be a very useful one. Personally, I'd like to have that for use with > *normal* swikis, though content negotiation is prolly the right way to do > this.
In what case would you use this, exactly? The only place I've seen this be useful is if a browser processes HTML in a way that is so broken you just can't find a way to send it generic HTML. Most of the time people propose a feature like this, they say "I want to send tag X if it's browser B" or "I want to send text-friendly HTML if it's browser B". Well, HTML already provides for both of these problems. Browsers are pretty good at just ignoring tags they do not support. And keep in mind, there are more text-mode browsers than just lynx, and there are more Squeak browsers than just Scamper. Furthermore, your guesses about what someone will desire based on their browser, have very good chances to be mistaken. It would really bug me, for example, if someone were to cut the IMG tags out of a page because they realize I am using lynx. Alternatively, someone might want to layout the page completely differently depending on the client. However, this is a losing battle -- new browser versions come out all the time. > > And it's not *quite* true that you have to modify the sever for new > browsers...if the browsers forge their user-agent. Abuse, yes, but often a > useful one ;) First, not all browsers do this. Should people really have to reconfigure their browser to visit your site? Second, this isn't going to achieve the desired result. If an Opera user visits your site, do you really want to send them a random choice between Netscape and IE HTML, depending on what their User-Agent happens to be set to? Now, I will admit that if you are happy with supporting 60-80% of the people who visit your site, then you can just support the top 3-4 browser versions in their most common configurations. However, you can usually support 100% of the people who visit your site if you stick with standard HTML. -Lex
