this post was submitted on 21 Nov 2023
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Edit: Replies to this thread indicate this is not fully correct as it exists on all browsers; and is likely an ad thing.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 10 months ago (13 children)
[–] [email protected] 18 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (4 children)

Browser detection is rarely done through User Agent lookup anymore. Nowadays we determine browser through feature detection.

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Browser_detection_using_the_user_agent#avoiding_user_agent_detection

[–] [email protected] 13 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

And yet in this case if I change my agent to any non-FF value while using FF, videos load immediately.

I set my agent back to FF, 5 second delay.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Yeah, but some amount of the time is just easier to rely on the user agent. Why bother with the fancy logic when user agent spoofing, adblocking Firefox users is a % of a % of a %?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

I tend to agree. I think there's little need as a developer to go that extra mile for accurate browser detection without UA unless it's for fingerprinting. Most feature sets are supported and where it isn't you have a polyfil or whatever shim to make it work. So in the case of fingerprinting you try not to rely fully on anything the user can alter easily.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

Doesn't matter what's the best way to do it in reality. UA is easily a possibility for any website. Nothing stopping it

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago (2 children)
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