01-07-2003, 06:18 PM
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Executive Editor
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 29,160
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All Those Crazy Browsers...
I'm preparing my post detailing the traffic burst from our 2003 Kick-off contest, and in looking through my log files, I'm seeing some very interesting browsers hitting the site. Here are some random bits of info that might raise an eyebrow or two:
� 79.49% of you are using Internet Explorer. Much less than the industry standard of 90+%, which doesn't surprise me too much - you're mostly a tech-savvy audience, so you're using "alternative" browsers. Buncha' geeks. :lol: Of all the IE users, the vast majority are using IE 6.x or 5.x, and 3.11% of the total IE users are using Pocket Internet Explorer (I think - there's some confusion over exactly how Pocket Internet Explorer reports the user-agent string). And one of you is using a beta of Internet Explorer 7.0. Please email me a copy of that, would you? Thanks. :wink:
� 8.65% of you are using a flavour of Netscape. Surprisingly, 70.71% of that user base is using a 3.x version of Netscape. You poor souls! But really sad story is the guy using Netscape 2.02 to view this site. I'd have to get a time machine to find a browser that old!
� 3.32% are using Mozilla, with version 1.2.1 being the most popular build.
� Mazingo is next with 2.2%, Opera with 1.3%, then things get really funky...
� The Googlebot accounts for 0.44% of our overall browser type usage. I love Google, and Google loves me, we're as happy as can be...
� There are some browsers I don't recognize at all: lwp trivial, PHP (the scripting language has its own browser?), NIF, Wget, Hantenna Antenna, ChinaClaw, SpaceBison...the list of strangeness goes on. 267 browser types in total.
� I can see a few other search engine spiders, and a few "site suckers" that download everything they can find, and thankfully few of you use such software - it's a huge drain on our bandwidth, but there's not enough traffic from it to warrant blocking.
� Some of the other interesting browsers that have visited the site: Sony Ericcson T68, Microsoft Data Access Internet Publishing Provider Protocol Discovery, Lynx 8O, Sony Ericsson P800, Nokia 7650, Sanyo SCP6000, Nokia 5150, and a few other phones.
� Some of you have hacked your user agent strings: "get lost leave me alone" and "the truth is out there" seem to be the most popular hacks.
Hope you enjoyed the stats! 
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01-07-2003, 06:27 PM
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Neophyte
Join Date: Dec 2002
Posts: 4
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I wonder what ThunderHawk reprots itself as? I suspect probably Mozilla as I seem to recall that is what they (Bitstream) are using on they're servers to render the pages. It would be interesting to know.
I know that about half my visits are using ThunderHawk ;-)
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01-07-2003, 06:27 PM
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Thinker
Join Date: Sep 2002
Posts: 405
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How do you hack a user agent string?
And what is it?
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01-07-2003, 06:42 PM
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Pupil
Join Date: Aug 2002
Posts: 33
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Quote:
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I know that about half my visits are using ThunderHawk
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Me too! About a third of my visits are with Thunderhawk. However, I have tried to use Thunderhawk on blogger.com, and if it is Mozilla, then it is a really early version of it.
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01-07-2003, 06:55 PM
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Editor Emeritus
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 10,981
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Quote:
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Originally Posted by Fzara
How do you hack a user agent string?
And what is it?
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The user agent string reports the type of browser you're using to the site you are visiting. (If the site asks for it). This is used to customize content and HTML tags for your browser. Since no two browsers are created equal, it helps to know what browser you are working with.
As for how to hack it, I don't know why you would want to. It could cause sites you visit to not display well. However, if you feel that you need to, just ask google. I'm sure there's an answer out there.
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01-07-2003, 06:58 PM
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Neophyte
Join Date: Jan 2003
Posts: 1
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As for the PHP browser, I'd venture to say that some people are using the PHP function fopen() with a URL specified, in order to grab news from this site and display it on another.
Dave
(NetCaptor & Chimera user.. yay tabs!)
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01-07-2003, 06:58 PM
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Intellectual
Join Date: Mar 2002
Posts: 171
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the 3% ppc access is interesting... any way to break that down to approximate the number of different users?
Reason I ask is that the new ppc front page is pretty dissapointing compared to the old... it's as if it is not worth the effort to address those who use it as their primary access.
at the very least, _please_ either increase the download to several days of column content or offer a link to move to earlier content.
In my case, if that were addressed and the forums were readable, the ppc would be my only access here.
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01-07-2003, 07:30 PM
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Pupil
Join Date: Mar 2004
Posts: 31
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don't forget
And now we got an apple browser coming. I promise I would switch to that if they make one that runs on Windows.
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01-07-2003, 07:35 PM
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Pontificator
Join Date: Aug 2003
Posts: 1,185
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Re: don't forget
Quote:
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Originally Posted by Blade_of_Narsil
And now we got an apple browser coming. I promise I would switch to that if they make one that runs on Windows.
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Or iSync that syncs the PPC :P
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01-07-2003, 07:47 PM
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Thinker
Join Date: Jul 2002
Posts: 309
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Why so few using netscape? the last one (7) is really better than IE. Really better.
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