MBOX-Line: From slusarz at curecanti.org  Tue Nov 27 15:04:55 2012
To: imap-protocol@u.washington.edu
From: Michael M Slusarz <slusarz@curecanti.org>
Date: Fri Jun  8 12:34:49 2018
Subject: [Imap-protocol] Re: Suspend/Restore feature proposal
In-Reply-To: <50B508E3.3050209@verizon.net>
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Message-ID: <20121127160455.Horde.mDRBAWWbJkueCNI0adKoQQ5@bigworm.curecanti.org>

Quoting Joshua Cranmer <Pidgeot18@verizon.net>:

> On 11/26/2012 7:48 PM, Michael M Slusarz wrote:
>> IMAP command sniffing = javascript browser sniffing. The days of  
>> parsing a browser's User-Agent field are so 1999.
>
> As someone who has seen both ends of the User-Agent debate (as a web  
> developer and as a browser implementer), I can honestly say that  
> parsing User-Agents is actually a very powerful and useful  
> technique, and even browser vendors won't have a problem with it...  
> if you do it properly.

I don't have a problem with Browser sniffing, per se.  A web  
framework, for example, only has the User-Agent string to go by so by  
necessity they need to use that.

The problem comes when other agents, or proxies, "steal" a user-agent  
string from another product in an effort to provide compatibility.   
For something more abstract, like mobile detection, this shouldn't be  
an issue.  But if you are trying to workaround a much more granular  
issue - does this browser support transparent PNGs? - problems arise.

So, IMHO, when you have access to the actual environment you are  
trying to test (i.e. DOM for javascript) there's no real excuse to not  
do feature sniffing properly.  It's not quite as clean in IMAP -  
sending MBs of data to an APPEND command only to find out it failed -  
but it is reliable.

michael


