Visit about:compat in your firefox. I find it insane that these exist.
Edit: I’ve learned that this is part of the webcompat system addon developed by Mozilla and other contributors. I see why this is beneficial default behavior, since FF has no chance of getting enough market share to matter more if things are broken.
However, this behavior is too intrusive for my taste. For example this injection: https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/file/8a4afb4d34f8/browser/extensions/webcompat/injections/js/bug1472075-bankofamerica.com-ua-change.js is basically just to silence annoying user reports.
Also, Every site FF pretends to be a different UA on is artificially reducing FF market share data.
There are so many legitimate things to complain about with Mozilla, why do people go out of their way to complain about the most innocuous shit.
This isn’t even an issue though, its just to fix bugs with certain websites that block Firefox for no reason or have other weird compatibility issues. Which I would think is a good thing?
You’re right, for a browser meant for the masses it is probably a net benefit. I posted because I was surprised by this hidden behavior that seems better suited for a browser extension. Sneaky behavior like this is what I’m paranoid about in closed software like windows.
To your point, Linux itself is probably the #1 example of hacky patches to work around other people’s problems.
Looks like compatibility hacks for various websites.
Interventions - are deeper modifications to make sites compatible. Firefox may modify certain code used on these sites to enforce compatibility. Each compatibility modification links to the bug on Bugzilla@Mozilla; click on the link to look up information about the underlying issue.
User Agent Override - change the user agent of Firefox when connections to certain sites are made.
https://wiki.mozilla.org/Compatibility/UA_Override_&_Interventions_Testing
Don’t even get me started with about:config
Pretty sure it’s always been like this.
The web is a mess. If you do anything on it on any combination of software and hardware and expect security or functionality you’re barking up the wrong tree.
You’re probably right. I just want what’s advertised: software that uses web standards to interact with servers on my behalf. Idk where this feature lands on that scale. This seems like a pre-browser-extension sort of feature that is obsolete now.
