Wickham Posted February 3, 2009 Report Share Posted February 3, 2009 When I use Stefan's tutorial to identify browsers using PHP <?php $_SESSION['browser'] = $_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT']; ?> I get this using IE7:- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 5.1) and this using Firefox:- Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-GB; rv:1.9.0.5) Gecko/2008120122 Firefox/3.0.5 What is the Mozilla/4.0 reference in the IE7 output and what are the Windows references in the Firefox output? General explanation please. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
shelfimage Posted February 3, 2009 Report Share Posted February 3, 2009 IE did this to accept content from Netscape browsers so long long ago and kept it: from wikipedia: The earliest example of this is Internet Explorer's use of a User-Agent string beginning "Mozilla/ (compatible; MSIE ...", in order to receive content intended for Netscape Navigator, its main rival at the time of its development. This was not a reference to the open-source Mozilla browser, which was developed much later, but to the original codename for Navigator, which was also the name of the Netscape company mascot. This format of User-Agent string has since been copied by other user agents, partly because Explorer, in turn, came to dominate. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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