| How do you tell? How do you tell which browser was used? Above are the stats for my personal site for the month of September up until midnight last night (the 27th). How can I tell which ones are FireFox/Opera/etc vs IE?
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 rjacksonPremium,Mod
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| The ones that say "MSIE" are Internet Explorer, and the ones that say "Gecko" are Mozilla/Firefox.
Reading browser strings is somewhat confusing. Back in the day when Netscape ruled the roost, and IE was a minority, Netscape developed a lot of new HTML markups that worked only in (surprise) Netscape.
A lot of sites were using this new "Netscape-only" code, kicking IE to the curb. So Microsoft enhanced their product, and threw "Mozilla compatible" into their user-agent to fool sites into thinking it was the real deal. |
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| said by rjackson:
The ones that say "MSIE" are Internet Explorer, and the ones that say "Gecko" are Mozilla/Firefox.
Thanks rjackson. Never knew how to tell which is which. 
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I'll take "Things Only I Would Know" for $10,000 Alex. |
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| reply to rjackson
said by rjackson:
The ones that say "MSIE" are Internet Explorer, and the ones that say "Gecko" are Mozilla/Firefox.
Unless someone has set their copy of Mozilla/FireFox to fake it's User Agent string. In that case, some of the Internet Explorer might actually be Mozilla/FireFox, but they'll be counted as IE and Mozilla's market share will be seen as less than it is. (User Agent switching is a pet peeve of mine.)
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rjacksonPremium,Mod
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| That is correct, it is fairly trivial for someone to spoof their user-agent. That only means you can't trust any of these web statistics to be completely accurate.
Occasionally, I have to change my user-agent string to convince a site I am capable to view their site. You don't see too many of sites these days using a draconian method of browser lockout, but generally what I do when I encounter them is to never ever visit again.
User-agents should be used as intended, for statistical reasons. They should never be used as a means for content control. |
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