IE11 to disguise itself as WebKit (and not Firefox!) · Links

Mobilism 2015, Beyond Borders, Beyond Mobile

Mobilism 2015 is over

25 March 2013 · PPK

The creation of IE11 has started, and the first news we have concerns the browser string. The ancient 'MSIE' will be replaced by a simple 'IE', and the string 'like Gecko' will be added. This is done to avoid silly browser detects that are used to serve up special content to IE, and it's completely understandable.

What's less understandable is that this article, and all people who tweeted about it, got one crucial detail wrong: IE is not emulating Firefox here, but WebKit. The 'like Gecko' string has been part of most WebKit-browser UA strings from time immemorial, but has never been used by Firefox, which instead uses 'Gecko'.

So IE is emulating WebKit here, and not Firefox. Pay attention, tech writers and retweeters!