[whatwg] Why do we need Mozilla in userAgent string?

[Ian Hickson]

On Sat, 26 Mar 2011, Biju wrote:
>
> Nearly all browsers have word "Mozilla" in userAgent string, hence no
> benefit in detecting that at server.
> So why do we need "Mozilla" in userAgent string?

On Sat, 26 Mar 2011, Oliver Hunt wrote:
>
> Because there are a huge number of sites out there that check for the 
> existence of a feature by doing 'navigator.userAgent.indexOf("mozilla") 
> != -1' or similar (or they decide that the absence of the mozilla term 
> means that you're IE6), so not including the word "mozilla" in the user 
> agent would cause those sites to break.
> 
> The majority of the content in modern user agent strings is not about 
> telling the server or client anything useful about the browser, it's 
> about making badly written websites work correctly.

Yup, that's pretty much it.

-- 
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