On 10/30/05, Mark Harris <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Seriously, why is this flamebait. I suggested this in another thread a > couple of days ago. Is there a problem I'm not aware of with server-side > sniffing?
Mm, well... it's not really a problem if it's properly maintained. But, seeing as many small sites won't be (especially with the proliferation of CMS tools of late) maintained by a web developer with knowledge of that sort of stuff, it presents future difficulties. Especially in this case, where targetting "Firefox" might be adequate for the next few months, but what if 1.5 fixes broken behaviour? You're then serving "acceptably degraded" content to Firefox when you don't have to. This is not, as Gunlaug said, "likely to work reliably for very long when we're dealing with Opera, Gecko, Safari and other good browsers" (because they are constantly being updated). He was talking about client-side filtering, but the same principle applies: you can't foresee what versions of x browser will have the feature introduced in, and hence you risk a) excluding it when support for x feature DOES become adequate, or b) committing yourself to ongoing maintenence (possibly unpaid) So, in summary, it's not a problem if you know what versions of a browser you are targetting, or you're prepared to make changes in the future. Josh ****************************************************** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list & getting help ******************************************************
