Just like predicted, we’re back to square 1 with UA-CH vs. User-Agent. 🤦♂️ Unfortunately, I can’t document the following claim, but I’m pretty sure that this is the case: The reason for minority browser being locked out and/or getting a degraded experience, is client side (JavaScript) user-agent (or now UA-CH)- sniffing, performed by junior webdevs. […]
I’ve written a couple of post about User-Agent Client-Hints (UA-CH) before, and in specific how to delegate UA-CH to third party sites or domains. Delegating UA-CH is useful when you need other sites, domains or hostnames to receive the additional information. One example is if you’re using an image CDN to optimize images. Since Chrome […]
User-Agent Client-Hints (UA-CH) are just around the corner. The Chrome teams original plan was to deprecated the user-agent header and have it replaced by UA-CH. The motivation was privacy. The User-Agent string is an abundant source of passive fingerprinting information about our users. It contains many details about the user’s browser and device as well as many […]
‼️ Note: there is an updated version of this article here. User-Agent Client Hints (UA-CH) has been hot in the Chrome camp lately. Motivated by the sudden urge to deprecate the User-Agent request header due to privacy concerns. With Chrome version 84 and higher, the plumbing with delegation through feature- or permission policies is implemented. Delegating UA-CH to a […]
I’ve been following the development of this initiative from Google more or less since it was first filed as a note on Github. Yesterday, the Chrome team announced an “Intent to Deprecate and Freeze: The User-Agent string”. Along with this intent, an intent to ship Client Hints infrastructure and UA Client Hints is published. “UA […]