[PLUG] Web servers, browsers, and OSes

wes plug at the-wes.com
Tue Jun 9 21:40:05 UTC 2020


On Tue, Jun 9, 2020 at 12:38 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.
>
> Regards,
>
> Rich
>
>
To your question, there are a number of reasons ones' OS might be a factor.
A big, common one, is related to the technology used to capture and
transmit the video and audio data. Most pages on a given website would use
HTML for general functions. But the actual video conference would use
something very different. Some are fairly open, and work well across OSes.
But, if a service was still using Flash, or Silverlight, or some other less
open tech, it could introduce compatibility issues. This is because the
software the browser uses to support them relies on elements of the
underlying OS. And that's all before we even start thinking about things
like plugins or extensions interfering.

If you wanted to investigate further, you could give us more info about
which service this is and we can check it out.

-wes



More information about the PLUG mailing list