[HAL9000Ti]

UA reduction has officially started with Chrome 101: The UA string is not sending the minor version anymore, only 0.0.0.

This is the beginning of the end for the UA string. As more and more UA reductions are deployed, the UA hints will become more useful and eventually depreciate the UA string entirely.

https://www.chromium.org/updates/ua-reduction/

https://wicg.github.io/ua-client-hints/

[grishka]

The one important use of the UA string is being able to tell whether it's a computer or a mobile device, to use different templates to render your pages. The new "client hints" botched that because while yes, there is "CH-UA-Mobile" that gives you a straight yes/no answer with no guesswork involved, you have to ask for it first — you can't get it on the first request, which very much defeats its purpose.

And don't suggest me to use the same markup for both desktop and mobile with adaptive styles. More often than not this ends up being equally terrible on both kinds of devices.

[eyelidlessness]

> And don't suggest me to use the same markup for both desktop and mobile with adaptive styles. More often than not this ends up being equally terrible on both kinds of devices.

My experience is generally (though not always) the exact opposite. It’s usually the case that when designers and implementers took the care to ship a properly responsive design, they’ve produced a design that adapts well to many factors. Designs which treat different device classes differently tend to be rigid, and fail to anticipate subtle differences or factors within those device classes.

I hesitate to link to the snotty site most commonly used to point this out (though I will if anyone asks), but HTML is responsive by default. Knowing this, and building upon it, is a great way to start learning how to build responsive pages that work really well.

[paranoidrobot]

I would much rather they served the same content with 'responsive' designs, than do browser-sniffing and serve me a mobile page.

More often than not, I immediately go and switch out of Mobile site for pretty much everything I visit on mobile.

Features are missing, functionality is broken or gone, they force text/page sizes that don't work for me and block zooming (Firefox thankfully allows me to override that b.s now), and they serve "Install our App!" overlays.

Doordash I found is like this - some stores use them for white-labelled Delivery and SMS/Email you a link to the tracking page for your order.

I click the link on my desktop, I get a standard page, it shows a tracking map.

I click the link on my phone, I get a mobile version of the page which does have a tracking map, but the entire screen is covered with an overlay that says "Install our App!" with no dismiss option and you have to try to make out the driver's location through the 80% opaque overlay.

[themacguffinman]

Not sure what's the issue here, according to the spec you should be able to get it on the first request:

> Sites that wish to serve mobile-specific sites using UA-CH can do that using the Sec-CH-UA-Mobile headers that are sent by default on every request.

What am I missing?

[jedimastert]

The "mobile" hint is sent with every request, regardless of preferences.

[mminer237]

About time. Statistics are mostly dead in favor of privacy anyway. At least this should help stop Google's blatantly anti-competitive practice of neutering search results if you're not using Chrome.

[kbelder]

You think Google is reducing info Chrome sends in its user agent string in order to limit the ability of Google to favor Chrome?

I can't imagine Google would be doing this without some sort of back-channel method of tracking this exact info. They're likely just removing this info from visibility to other websites, giving themselves a competitive advantage. Man, that sounds a little paranoid, but...