Where in the Chromium source code can I modify the browser's User Agent String?
I am working with the Mac OS. Also, I do not want to append to the User Agent. Essentially, I want to change the UA enough so that a website still thinks it is Chrome (as is standard with Chromium UA), while it is not chrome.
I have had issues with appending a unique identifier in that it causes many websites to block my access.
This is definitely an old question, but it's a question I too have been searching for an answer for. Since StackOverflow results appear in Google search results, and that there isn't another question like this, it's a good idea to document it for others.
It's currently located in content\common\user_agent.cc
It used to be located in webkit\glue\user_agent.cc, but was moved around when Google forked it to make Blink.
Like dangered wolf mentioned, Google Chrome and Chromium build and retrieve user agent from this method BuildUserAgentFromOSAndProduct : Build Chromium's user-agent
And this is where Chrome will retrieve the final Chrome/version string from GetProductNameAndVersionForUserAgent : Retrieve Chrome/version string for user-agent
Related
I'm frequently dealing with websites that open a bunch of new tabs with ads and I'm tired of it.
A while back I discovered AdCloseGold which is a Chrome extension that automatically closes all tabs that open a specified URL and I've happily used it for a while now.
Unfortunately, AdCloseGold has a few shortcomings:
1) No wildcards in the url
2) A limited amount of urls one can ad (because it stores the data in a Google account)
3) Doesn't close blank pages or page not found.
4) Doesn't have a button or something that says "add THIS page to auto close", meaning you have to copy and paste all urls manually into the list.
5) Doesn't provide any prewritten list of urls.
Recently I've started using the hosts file, redirecting urls to a nonsense address and then close that address through AdCloseGold, meaning I need just one address to auto close, but that has quite some problems as well, because the hosts file requires the full url, i.e. adding xyz.com to the hosts file doesn't redirect abc.xyz.com.
Furthermore, I do not really want to redirect all of these urls permanently but rather only in Chrome, so I can still access those pages through Firefox or IE.
I'm a (hobby) coder and I don't mind the work, I consider it more fun than work, but I only have some rudimentary knowledge of how to make a Chrome extension.
So the question is: Does a Chrome extension like an advanced AdCloseGold already exist and if not (I couldn't find any) where would I find a detailed enough tutorial for Chrome extensions, where I could learn this?
Author of Ad Close Gold here. I'm aware of the shortcoming you mentioned in your question. I've really wanted to add those to the add-on but never really can find the time to do so. I first created the add-on just for myself and it was fine for me. I thought I'd share the add-on with everyone since, even till this day, I cannot find any add-on that will auto-close tabs for me.
I have the source code for the add-on on github: https://github.com/mukunku/Ad-Close-Gold
Feel free to fork the repository and make any changes. You can create a separate add-on or merge the code back to my project if you like. If you merge the code back to mine, I can release it as a new version (And give you credit of course).
P.S. Wild cards are technically supported. If you use a regular expression as the URL and enable the IsRegEx option, it will work.
For example: www.ali.*.com
This will match all of the following:
www.aliexpress.com
www.aliother.com
www.ali.com
I want to add a button to my visual C++ form that will open with a specific browser. So far for links I've been using:
System::Diagnostics::Process::Start("UrlHere")
Which, as standard, opens with whatever your default browser is.
I'm wondering what the process would be to force the URL to open with a specific browser and if it's possible without the use of ShellExecute?
Edit - You are correct, this is C++/CLI. Removed the C++ Tag.
Edit Edit - Apologies if it came across as misleading. Some slight elaboration;
The buttons will launch to application URL's, some of which can only be used in Internet Explorer, others that CAN (and should) be used in Chrome. This is why I need to avoid using the default browser and have different buttons using different browsers when launching URLs
Before answering the 'how', I'd like to ask the question "should you be implementing this?"
By not launching the user's default browser, you are subverting the user's decision.
Perhaps the user prefers a particular interface, and is willing to live with the incorrect renderings that come with it.
Perhaps the user has a browser addon that they really need, such as a screen reader for the blind.
You are requiring additional software installed that the user may or may not want.
Perhaps the user doesn't want Chrome. Perhaps the user prefers FireFox.
You are saying that you know which browser is best, now and forever.
What if the next version of IE makes it work with the sites that are currently Chrome-only? What if the next version of Chrome fixes the sites that are currently IE-only?
What if the site changes so that it works in more browsers?
Do you go back and release a new version of your software that changes the browser for particular sites?
You're trying to solve a problem that may already be fixed.
Both Chrome and Firefox support a addon that will render a tab using the IE engine. It can be set to automatically activate when certain URLs are seen.
Perhaps there is a browser that already works with all your sites, that you don't know about.
Therefore, my recommendation is no, do not do this. The user has decided which browser they want to use, respect that decision and use the default browser.
That said, here's how you would do it: You could use the CreateProcess method, but you're in managed-land, so you might as well use it. Use the Process class to launch the new process for you.
Process^ browserProcess = gcnew Process();
browserProcess->StartInfo->UseShellExecute = false;
browserProcess->StartInfo->FileName = "C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Internet Explorer\\iexplore.exe";
browserProcess->StartInfo->Arguments = "http://www.google.com";
browserProcess->Start();
I have read several articles on feature detection and that it is more reliable than browser detection because browsers lie.
I couldn't find any information on why they lie. Does anyone know the reason why they would do that?
As far as I understand it, Webmasters do browser sniffing to find the capabilities of a browser and limit what they send to the browser. If a browser lies about it's capabilities they will receive more from the webmaster, you can read more:
http://farukat.es/journal/2011/02/499-lest-we-forget-or-how-i-learned-whats-so-bad-about-browser-sniffing
http://webaim.org/blog/user-agent-string-history/
The reason is simple:
Because web sites look at the user agent string and make assumptions about the browser, which are then invalid when the browser is updated to a new version.
This has been going on almost since the begining of the web. Browser vendors don't want their new versions to break the web, so they tweak the UA string to fool the code on existing sites.
Ultimately, if everyone used the UA string responsibly and updated their sites whenever new browser versions come out, then browsers wouldn't need to lie. But you have to admit, that's asking quite a lot.
Feature detection works better because when a new browser version comes out with that feature, the detection will pick it up automatically without the either browser needing to do anything special nor the site owner.
Of course, there are times when feature detection doesn't work perfectly -- eg maybe if a feature exists but has bugs in a particular browser. In that case, yes, you may want to do browser detection as a fall-back. But in most cases, feature detection is a much better option.
Another more modern reason is to just avoid demands to install mobile apps (where product owners contol what I can and can't do with content. No thanks!).
Today Reddit started to block viewing subreddits in case they detect a mobile browser in UserAgent so I had to change it just to be able to view content.
I am running a website based on php on a server run by a large host. My goal is very simple. Include link on my site to google search where I dynamically give the search term.
Starting with the url that appears in the address bar, I've narrowed the syntax down to
http://www.google.com/search?q=test
This works when I type it into the address bar. However, when I launch from the server, it redirects to:
www.google.com/webhp...lots of characters
There are references on the web to webhp being related to a virus but I'm pretty sure my host does not have any viruses on its servers.
Does anyone know proper way to launch simple google search from a link? Is a straight link forbidden? I am Willing to use JS to push link to client if necessary (which I use for google maps at Google's recommendation due to usage limits) but want to keep things as simple as possible. This link is just to save people a few clicks.
Thanks for any suggestions.
Simply use the urlencode Method
<?php
echo '<a href="http://www.google.com/search?q=', urlencode($userinput), '">';
?>
If you wish to do it with Javascript the answer is here: Encode URL in JavaScript?
Try to track down the "Url Rewriting", I think its a virus you need to remove: http://www.ehow.com/how_8728291_rid-webhp.html
WebHP is a computer virus that automatically sets your homepage to a
fake Google site, known as Google.com/WebHP. This virus will also
randomly open windows or tabs to load this website, as well as
generate pop-ups and fake errors. Also installed with this virus is a
rootkit which can disable your PC's firewall and other methods of
security. If left untreated, the WebHP virus allows hackers to
remotely access your computer and steal personal information, such as
credit card numbers and email passwords.
I'm tyring to get phonegap up and running on blackberry storm (9530 simulator). I had been testing my webapp from withing BB's built in browser, and it was looking ok, but then it totally bit once I tried to look at the some code from within phonegap, even though I was pointing phonegap to the same url (I hadn't yet gotten to the point of running code locally on the device).
I tried a test case on google and got similiar results. see below. I suspect that I'm missing something basic here. I would have expect both images to be nearly identical.
Browser
http://www.eleganttechnologies.com/outside/ImgDeviceBB9530WebGoogle.jpg
Phonegap
http://www.eleganttechnologies.com/outside/ImgDeviceBB9530PgGoogle.jpg
[Update]
To shed some light on what is happening, I ran the browser and the embedded browser (phonegap) against the W3 mobile web acid test: http://www.w3.org/2008/06/mobile-test/
I definitely notice differences between the two, but I don't yet know the 'why' and the 'how-to-address'.
Acid via built-in browser
(source: eleganttechnologies.com)
BTW - I ran this earlier today and got a couple more green square than just now.
Acid via browser embedded into phonegap
http://www.eleganttechnologies.com/outside/ImgDeviceBb9530PgAcid.jpg
Disclaimer: I don't know anything about phonegap, but have a pretty good theory. By default the embedded browser control on BlackBerry uses an older version of the rendering engine than the BlackBerry browser itself does.
At the BlackBerry developer conference last year, a talk was given about this, and there's an undocumented option to use the newer rendering engine. \
The option ID is 17000 (yes, a magic number, which could change, use at your own risk etc), and should be set to true. Not sure how you'd pass this option through phonegap (I'm not familiar with the toolkit) but using the BlackBerry APIs it's something like:
BrowserContent content;
...
content.getRenderingOptions().setProperty(RenderingOptions.CORE_OPTIONS_GUID, 17000, true);
I don't know the specifics of the browsers you are using, but I do know that most of the big sites will detect your OS + browser combination to decide what HTML to show you.
If Google is seeing a different user agent, you might get a generic mobile version of the HTML instead os the Blackberry specific HTML you get for the built in browser.
If you have access to a web server, try hitting it with both browser setups and see if there is any difference in the log file. That might tell you something interesting.
As we can see in your Acid tests...
One browser (the built-in one) is reporting correctly as a BlackBerry9530, and the other (phonegap) is not presenting the user-agent ["Testing with ."].
In this case, Google is providing you with the default view of their homepage, whereas when you are reporting yourself as a BlackBerry device, you will get the BlackBerry specific rendering.
By the sounds of things, using phonegap is removing the default user-agent (most probably because it's not recognising your device). As phonegap is open-source, the best bet is to get in there, and debug it and find out what happens with the user-agent when the http requests leave the device and track it back from there.
Maybe one browser has capabilities that another one does not?
Hm. By looking at the screenshot I would say that the second page is probably missing some resources. It may be missing some images, scripts and the CSS files, which would explain different l&f. Knowing how Blackberry Browser Field API works, I would guess that the implementation that uses the BrowserField was not done correctly. Just my guess. In addition to that, when the browser field is initialized the caller needs to configure it properly by enabling the appropriate browser features - scripts, styles etc. Again, the API is done in a very weird way, I have gotten myself into this trap once. When setting the options, you cannot just create one mask (like CSS | WML | SCRIPT) and make one call. Options are numeric and, I believe, non-overlapping - but you still need to call the API for setting each option independently.
Also the way asynchronous loading of the resources for BrowserField takes time to understand.
Just my $0.02.