touch-packages team mailing list archive

[Olivier Tilloy <olivier.tilloy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> now I've just finished fixing the code on my own site to handle "mobi"
> and "like android" tokens correctly

Glad that this discussion helped. However the real positive take-away
should be: don’t use the UA string to infer device capabilities at all.
There are nowadays enough web APIs to properly detect device
capabilities, and on the other hand, if done properly responsive design
should ensure that a website renders well on all form factors without
the need to discriminate user agents based on their identifiers, only on
viewport size.


> * Provide a button or something in the browser to explicitly switch UA
> string (like Sogou does to handle Chinese websites that require IE6
> brokenness)
> * Support an "about:debug" page or similar that allows a custom UA
> string to be typed in
> * Allow the user to edit the override list on their phone (even just a
> text file editable in the terminal would do)

Any of the above three ideas would be doable, although none is currently
on the roadmap. Contributions are very welcome, though!

> * Support plugins in the browser that would allow third-party
> developers to fix the problem for you

Not a goal for webbrowser-app, very unlikely to happen ever (or at least
in the foreseeable future).

-- 
You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu
Touch seeded packages, which is subscribed to webbrowser-app in Ubuntu.
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1328183

Title:
  User-Agent string results in poor UX on web

Status in webbrowser-app package in Ubuntu:
  Triaged

Bug description:
  The User-Agent string for the browser is similar enough to the Android
  browser User-Agent, that it creates a poor experience when browsing
  the web on an Ubuntu phone. An inordinately large number of web sites
  persistently advertise to "install our app" instead of providing the
  best web experience; an app which cannot be installed.

  This is exacerbated by the pervasiveness of webapps on Ubuntu phone,
  which simply embed the mobile web site with webapp-container, and
  still result in seeing such advertisements, despite the fact that the
  "app" on Ubuntu is already installed, and the Android apps being
  advertised are simply not installable.

  Having all the big web sites telling users of Ubuntu that they should
  be using Android instead, is not very good for the user experience at
  all.

To manage notifications about this bug go to:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/webbrowser-app/+bug/1328183/+subscriptions