Wednesday, May 02, 2007

user agent switcher for older web apps

Perhaps foolishly, I installed the latest version of IE, IE7. I noticed it broke the browser sniffers of some of the older web applications I access. After searching for a plugin for Firefox to simulate any pre-IE7 versions of Internet Explorer, I found this lovely piece of work from the master, Chris Pederick called the User Agent Switcher for Firefox:
http://chrispederick.com/work/useragentswitcher/



It has saved me on numerous occasions from having to remotely login to another server in order to use an older version of IE.

Thanks Chris! We love ya!

In the opposite vein, I also found a plugin called Mask IE:
http://projectdistributor.net/Projects/Project.aspx?projectId=164

that allows for switching of user agents for IE; however, the .Net framework version that it calls for is obscure (2.0.50727) and I did not want to get into the hassle of tracking down and updating the .Net Framework just for one app.

Update 1/25/2008
For IE7, here's a link I had forgotten about that explains how to tweak your Windows Registry to set your IE user-agent:
http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2005/04/27/412813.aspx

The reg tweak is here:
http://www.fiddlertool.com/useragent.aspx

This registry update allowed me to view our old WebTrends 6.0 portal. The portal does a browser sniff that precludes the use of any browsers over IE6.0. More importantly, you can easily reverse the registry update.

cheers,
the mule

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