Re: NIU Homepages and HTML to use

sfahey@niu.edu
Mon, 16 Oct 95 12:22:51 cdt

Eric Behr said:
>HTML is supposed to provide a "device independent" description of
>pages, whenever possible. That's why some Netscape enhancements are
>very irritating: for example, the fancy backgrounds make text hard
>or impossible to read on monochrome screens, and I have to disable
>them in my browser.

Some servers check for the browser type by scanning the string "User-Agent:"
in the HTTP request header. I keep track of the "agents" in an agent
log file. It looks like this:

[02/Oct/1995:16:40:12 -0500] xxx.xxx.xx.xx : IBM WebExplorer DLL /v1.03
[02/Oct/1995:17:30:00 -0500] xxx.xxx.xx.xx : IWENG/1.2.000 via proxy gateway
CERN-HTTPD/3.0 libwww/2.17
[02/Oct/1995:18:26:27 -0500] xxx.xxx.xx.xxx : Mozilla/1.22 (Windows; I; 16bit)
[02/Oct/1995:20:44:23 -0500] xxx.xxx.xxx.x : Lynx/2.3.7 BETA libwww/2.14
[03/Oct/1995:09:49:12 -0500] xxx.xxx.xx.x : AIR_Mosaic(16bit)/v3.10.06.07

(xxx.xx.xxx.xx is the IP address)

If you know what "type" of HTML each browser prefers you should be able to
configure your server to send the appropriate document. Of course, you still
have to write and maintain complete sets of HTML documents for each HTML type.

I know that this doesn't address all of the problems you've stated but it may
help webmasters who have to serve older browsers.

Sean Fahey
Center for Governmental Studies
Northern Illinois University
DeKalb IL 60115 phone:815-753-0937 email:sfahey@niu.edu