Firefox UserAgent Switcher list
List Last Updated: 2017-08-25
Current Version: 2.6.4 License: BSD 2 Clause (read license) This license has only one requirement, that the included license/copyright information be preserved. Otherwise users/distributors are free to do whatever they want with it. Since the license/copyright is included inside the xml file, that's all you need. The Current List Version Every category is much larger, with more browsers, mobile user agents, the list is too long to go into here, here are the primary categories. See following posting for basic changelog. If you want an item added, then post in this thread, and include the following information: device brand, model/model number (if mobile ua); full useragent string; the browser name/version number, if relevant. Do not ask me to look this up for you, if you have a request provide the required data. You can use either method to download the current UserAgent Switcher List 2.x.x xml file:
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Download XML file Simply save this file by right clicking on it, then get the UserAgent Switcher, and import the file. This list includes all of the default items from the current default UserAgent Switcher install, so you can just overwrite your default. UserAgent Switcher is made by Chris Pederick, who also makes the absolutely indispensible Web Developer Toolbar. While being an excellent tool, the User Agent Switcher only comes with a few user agents. Now you have a complete, over complete really, list of useragents, and can add as many more as you'd like. Have fun with it. If you have a mobile device or browser you want added to this master list, please provide the following information: If mobile: Device name/brand/model number Full user agent string if standard, just provide the user agent string (scroll to the bottom of this page to see your current user agent string printed out), along with an explanation of why it should be included in the main list, and which category directory it belongs in. Thanks Legacy version Uses the single non-folder layout. Both the txt and xml file versions are legacy. Version 1.0.4 These will never be updated by me again, so should in general just be considered as historical objects. Back to top |
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Changes To User Agent Switcher List:
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Uses for the User Agent Switcher
Could anyone outline circumstances where you might use the User Agent Switcher?
I've seen examples of URLs being planted in the string itself, and I understand how some users might wish to spoof their browser, but are there any other legitimate uses? Paul Back to top |
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There's lots of uses for user agent switching as long as there are lame website makers who do silly Internet Explorer only user agent detection when the site runs fine on Firefox. Other uses are getting into sites that are made for for example Safari but work fine on firefox, there's some big mac oriented sites like that.
Other uses are getting past login pages that allow googlebot to enter. For testing your own scripts too it's pretty useful, to make sure you didn't forget anything if you are doing for example CSS user agent detection. We made this one to test our PHP browser detection script because there was a certain point where we had some really bad bugs in it that would have been caught if had used the user agent switcher. For most users, the default user agents that Chris Pederick installs on the user agent switcher are more than adequate, unless they need for example Safari emulation. Personally, I'd turn the question around and ask if it is a legitimate use of HTML and the Hyper Text Transfer Protocol in general to make a site that only works in one of the technically worst browsers out there at the moment, MSIE. Back to top |
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Much obliged jeffd, I'm understanding more and more why this is such a neat utility!
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:: jeffd wrote ::
Personally, I'd turn the question around and ask if it is a legitimate use of HTML and the Hyper Text Transfer Protocol in general to make a site that only works in one of the technically worst browsers out there at the moment, MSIE. In the wireless/handheld world, using the UA string to determine the capabilities of a device and send appropriate information used to be a requirement if you wanted anything beyond plain text. It was worse than in the old days of the web... Today most handheld browsers support some level of CSS and most of HTML 4.01 (or XHTML), but if you are still trying to squeeze the most out of a user's device capabilities, the UA string may tell you that the device only supports 2-bit b&w images, etc... Paul, I use it for testing all sorts of service that sniff UA strings, such as "mobile" versions of various websites (CNN, Google, Yahoo, etc...). Some of these services see your UA and direct you to a totally different set of pages that you would otherwise only see in a handheld/cellphone browser. Back to top |
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mobiGeek, thanks for mentioning mobile testing, that's going to be a bigger and bigger part of the market soon, reminds me to add a few mobiles to the useragent switcher list, which would you recommend if you were only going to add a few? Currently the above version is getting pretty long, too long, but maybe I'll whip up a more testing/development oriented version.
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Here's an [new user link] that I could only access via Google's cache.
Let me know if you'd like more. I have access to the access logs of one very popular "mobile services" website. Back to top |
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The access log data would be useful if you feel like posting the various useragent strings from it, I almost never see mobiles in my stats.
We'll also be adding mobile detection to the php browser detection script by the way soon, I've been collecting all the ones I've seen, but it's not a very complete list. I had that page bookmarked too, too bad the site is gone, but I saved that, got a link to a wireless xml data file on sourceforge. That's a pretty complete list, but the annoying thing is that there is absolutely no consistency in useragent patterns, none. That's not good in terms of being able to reliably id them, but I'll take a closer look at that list. If you can provide an upto date realworld list that would be great though, as you can see, that xml file is very big [download the zipped version], and I'm sure most of those aren't actually in active use. Back to top |
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:: Code :: Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; U; Android 1.0; en-us; dream) AppleWebKit/525.10+ (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.0.4 Mobile Safari/523.12.2g1 phone... Back to top |
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