David E. Ross wrote:
or a request (demand?) that you install the latest version of Flash
even though you already installed the latest version. Even a human
may have trouble recognizing that what he or she sees in the browser
window is the result of invalid sniffing. Think of the software
logic to make such a recognition.
You're right, but I can generally tell when the website says something
incredibly stupid like "We only support Flash 9 or higher, but you have
version 6, so please upgrade" when I know for a fact I have version 10.
As a translator I know that really means "you didn't install the ActiveX
control for Internet Exploiter, so we won't play with you."
Then there is a cookie problem. Many Web sites that sniff for the
UA string set a session-only cookie indicating what user agent you
are using. A session-only cookie persists not merely as long as you
are viewing the Web site; no, it lasts until you terminate your
browser. Having a cookie that says "This is not IE or Firefox or
Chrome" often overrides any subsequent change to your UA string.
(Note that I omitted Safari and Opera. Many sniffing Web sites fail
to recognize those browsers.) You must delete the cookie when you
change the UA string. You must first determine a cookie was set and
which cookie if more than one was set, being careful not to delete
unrelated cookies.
<rant>
I'm generally disrespectful of cookies, and if I happen to delete too
many too fast, oh well, $#!+ happens. When I return to a site that set
one that I deleted by mistake, it'll set another. The only ones I have
to be careful of are login cookies and shopping carts, and I don't need
those for more than a few minutes in most cases. I routinely see far
more cookies than I need and wipe them out, and I have a huge list of
sites that aren't allowed to set cookies because SM's current cookie
manager is not nearly as good as it used to be. I just looked and
virtually every site I'd visited in the past few hours had set several
cookies. Of 84 cookies, only three were of any use to me, and the rest
were from a bunch of busybodies tracking my every move.
</rant>
Are you beginning to see how complicated this can be? :)
Only if you want it to be...
--
War doesn't determine who's right, just who's left.
--
Paul B. Gallagher
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