Don’t use the browser name for capability detection

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I’d like to emphasize that. For example Google Groups won’t let me upload an image to my profile, because I’m not running Firefox or Internet Exploder.

Well, I tried both Epiphany (which has a very clean and fast UI, unlike Firefox which is totally cluttered) and Iceweasel (which is Firefox, but with the trademark replaced). Both are using Gecko, Gecko/20070324 for Epiphany and Gecko/20070310 for Iceweasel. So I’m very sure they have the same capabilites as Firefox 2 when it comes to web sites.

If you want to test for Firefox’s capabilities, use the Gecko version number.. Thank you.

[Update: it was suggested I point people to GeckoIsGecko.org, which has links on how to properly detect the Gecko engine, instead of relying on the browser name.]

[Update: Mike Hommey pointed out that the ‘Gecko/date’ string is mostly meaningless, and largely is the build date; it doesn’t contain tree information. Instead you should be using the “rv: 1.8.0.11” part of the User-Agent. This is also what the getGeckoRv function on the howto linked from GeckoIsGecko.org does. Oh, and Firefox 2 is not gecko 2, but IIRC uses gecko 1.8.x, just like my Epiphany.]