The very sad story about Konqueror's user agent string

[Roland Seuhs]

Hi,

I have already urged several times that Konqueror's user agent string contains 
only the major version number ("Konqueror/3") so that Konqueror gets into 
more website stats and more visibility.
For example look at http://www.zyn.de/htstats/usage_200301.html , a 
non-technical webpage. If all Konq/3 versions would be grouped into one, 
Konq/3 would be on place #11 with good chances for place #9 within 2003. 
(Actually because of the groupings this would be #9 and #7 respectively)
With Apple releasing Safari, we would have a good chance of having 2 top-ten 
KHTML entries on many webpages by the end of 2003.

But this will not happen, I guess.

The already small userbase of Konq/3 is further balkanized because of 4 
different user agent strings: "3.0", "3.1", "3" (stupid me), "3)" (seems to 
be a bug when removing the other information from the user agent string" - 
and soon "3.2" I suppose.
Because of the maturity of KDE, fewer people upgrade to the newest version and 
even the newest won't reach more than 0.4% of page hits anymore, typically.
Konq will never reach any top-ten rating in 2003, Konq will remain invisible 
and ignored. Nobody except the most rabid KDE-fans will test websites against 
it. Sure, even with a top-ten rating, Konqueror would not be tested by all 
webmasters, but *some* would and even more would at least no longer lock it 
out on purpose. Locking out some browser you never heard about is easy and 
the normal thing to do for some webmasters, but if it's a top-ten browser you 
would at least let it in and view the Mozilla-version (or IE, doesn't matter 
at least Konq is no longer locked out). Sure in a perfect world, these 
browser-centric sites would not exist, but the world is far from perfect.

The irony is that because of Safari we will see websites optimized for KHTML 
that Konqueror will not be able to render (or that will lock out Konqueror 
altogether) because the Mac-fan who coded up the site has never seen 
Konqueror in his log-statistics.
A KHTML-optimized site which locks out Konq. Think about it - This could be 
right from a "Dilbert" cartoon.

I don't know if it would make sense to change the user agent to Konq/3 again, 
it has already been reversed twice so it will be again at 3.1.2, 3.1.4 and 
3.2, I guess. Maybe /* do not change, Konq doesn't send minor version number 
on purpose */ would help?
Another idea would be: "Konqueror/3; version:x.y.z" - similar to Mozilla's 
user agent scheme.

My opinion is that a web where fewer pages purposely lock out Konqueror would 
be nice, but others don't seem to share that view and think conforming to 
some unwritten law to send "major.minor" is more important than that, 
unfortunately.

Greetings,

Roland

-- 
"Statistics are like bikinis. What they reveal is suggestive, 
              but what they conceal is vital" - Aaron Levenstein