> I just saw bug 787054 which is proposing adjusting our User Agent on
> a
> per-site basis using a white list. I didn't see a discussion about
> this
> but would like to hear the reasoning behind it.
There are certain sites on the Web that simply must work in Firefox OS in order to deliver a compelling experience. There is an ongoing debate about what UA to use for Firefox OS. Including the "Android" token across the board leads to issues such as being prompted to install Android apps and compromising our evangelism efforts for Firefox OS. Adjusting our UA on a per-site basis is a tactic that we are considering to ensure that we have a way to get the content that our platform requires if our evangelism efforts are not successful in the time that we have.
>
> Maintaining a white list sounds like a lot of work (and doesn't scale
> well). Off the top of my head:
>
> - Who is maintaining the list? What are the criteria to get on the
> list?
The list owner has not yet been determined. I think product (Chris) should have input. The decision about adding a site to the list needs to come after we have investigated the cause of issues and determined that we cannot solve them by another means. Note that we cannot simply spoof the UA to solve the mobile Web's problems. There are issues with Webkit CSS and DOM property usage that this tactic alone will not resolve.
Criteria for adding a site to the list should include:
- the site is a must have experience for the platform (Google, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, etc.)
- evangelism efforts have not proved successful or the company will not be able to make the updates by the launch (Orkut may fall into this category)
>
> - As a developer how do I get on/off the list?
We should be actively working with the sites on the list to get them off of it.
>
> - How does the list get updated?
Jason had a proposal in bug 787054 to update the list in a similar fashion to how we update our blocklist.
>
> - Is there a public submission to get sites on the list?
No. I don't think that we should take a public submission. The list of sites should be restricted to those that we know are must haves.
>
> - Is there a strategy to get sites off the list? (I assume we don't
> want to maintain the list forever)
Yes. As I said above, we should actively be working with sites to get them off of the list.
>
> - How are we communicating this to developers? If someone maintains
>
site.com (which is on the list) they will get different results
> visiting
>
dev.site.com which will be hard to track down.
I don't think this is an issue if we limit the list to a very select group of sites.
Lawrence