A pref is needed so that the user agent string gets the "C-" tag inserted and then the value of the pref gets added as well -> in the form of Netscape 5.0 [en] C- <foo>.We can choose to have a different tag for mozilla sya "M-".

Jud was working on user agent stuff.

Is this a request for a pref UI? Or just a backend pref? Is this m12 material?

This is backend and not M12.

I can provide the pref. However user agent modification will only affect a non-critical portion of the string. We obviously can't permit the entire string to be modified.

over to valeski

Resetting QA Contact.

Bulk move of all Necko (to be deleted component) bugs to new Networking component.

what is the "-C" tag? The least obtrusive and standards/backwards compatible way of doing this is to insert a user/pref definable string as a field in the comment portion of the user agent string (see http://www.mozilla.org/build/user-agent-strings.html for more info).

We've decided that the user agent cannot be modififed via a pref. Vendors would grow the user agent string to no end. Mozilla/5.0 ... (...RealAudio, Shockwave, Joe's homegrown) etc. This is easily done via an installation program. There is a definable (via platform specific branding) way to modify the miscelaneous portion of the UA string).

Um, we didn't see this proliferation of garbage in the user agent in any prior release, and they all had this pref. This doesn't seem like a valid reason to reject this request to make 5.0 work the same as 4.x. If you don't implement what was requested, please give complete details on how the alternative is supposed to work. The CCK Wizard needs to be able to collect the 10 character UA append string and then do something with it such that it becomes part of the customized build. This should NOT require any user intervention, so I'll need an API or something to make this work. Then again, maybe the pref would be easier :-)

Clearing WON'T FIX resolution due to reopen.

Waiting for Shaver to build the user agent string service. (Mike: let us know if you're not going to do this now.)

cc'ing shaver. This won't be done until the initial UA work is complete (shaver, do you have a bug for this?). Does anyone know how to make a pref mission control editable only?

Mission-control-only? Is that meaningful at all, in a world with source and editable UI and behaviour? Since there's no Mozilla Mission Control-alike in any plans I've seen, I have to presume not. I don't have a bug for the UA service yet, though I thought there would be one already.

steve, I thought the only way to config the UA string in 4.x was to use mission control. Otherwise we would have definately seen UA string abuse. shaver, we'll come up w/ some mission control thinga-ma-jig, corporations need it.

Mission Control is a red herring. This only depends on the ability to set the pref in some manner. In the past it was in the netscape.cfg and one was required to use Mission Control or CCK to change it. (I'm not sure what would happen if a user put it in their prefs.js, probably people just didn't think of that as a way to change the user agent.) It is sufficient for this pref to be in one of the default pref files or in the netscape.cfg equivalent. It would be better if it didn't come from the prefs.js, but it's not worth attempting to enforce that. If you want to avoid long strings being added, feel free to limit the pref to N characters where N >= 10. These "appended" characters continue to belong in the "comment" area Jamie's paper describes, as was pointed out previously in this bug. In any case, the purpose of this append string is explicitly the same as what Jamie's proposal said - tracking. Along those lines, automatically adding some distinguishing characters such as "M-" to the appended string would allow overall tracking of customized builds and that continues to be important. As an aside, the old prefs architecture did not place limits on the setting of this pref. Rather, if it was set in the netscape.cfg and locked, then other settings would be ignored. Since creating a netscape.cfg required info and tools from MCD or CCK, most people were unaware that it even existed. CCK needs to continue to offer this feature since it's a fundamental part of customization. Any MCD equivalent would then build on what we provide.

-> shaver

Marking dup since these are the same basic request. *** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 6117 ***

Marking Verified as a dup.