[PLUG] Web servers, browsers, and OSes

Ben Koenig techkoenig at gmail.com
Tue Jun 9 21:34:19 UTC 2020


On Tue, Jun 9, 2020 at 12:35 PM Rich Shepard <rshepard at appl-ecosys.com>
wrote:

> On Tue, 9 Jun 2020, Ben Koenig wrote:
>
> > Browsers typically provide a "user agent" string to the web server when
> > making requests. This is a human-readable string that typically
> identifies
> > your browser, OS, and any other relevant info as deemed appropriate by
> the
> > browser. Most browsers offer the ability to modify your user agent string
> > ("user agent spoofing") to trick websites into giving you the page for a
> > different browser.
>
> Ben,
>
> Good to know. But, is one's UA allows access to multiple pages on the site,
> but not another one, is that a UA issue? Specifically, after I logged in to
> the conference web site I could look at the schedule, agendas, and other
> pages along the menu at the top. But, when looking at the page with the
> meeting I was to join there was no link 'join meeting,', '+' or other means
> to do so.
>
>
Maybe? Depends on how exactly they are serving that button. Parsing the UA
string is just one explanation for what you described. If that's true, then
changing your UA to a "supported platform" may result in the button being
displayed. The only way to know for sure is to try it, or read through all
the code.



If you are curious, one example of how to remove a button would be to
retrieve the user agent string using client-side javascript, and then
adjust the style of the button based on contents of the returned string.
Setting the "display: none;" on an HTML element will effectively remove the
button by preventing it from being displayed. That way you can serve the
same exact page to every user, but avoid displaying information that may
result in poor user experience.


Regards,
>
> Rich
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