[Fwd: Re: [Bug 763931] User agent detected by Google Mail is Safari - says it's obsolete version]

[Michael Catanzaro <mcatanzaro igalia com>]

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• From: Michael Catanzaro <mcatanzaro gnome org>
• To: George Kinal <gkinal alum mit edu>
• Subject: Re: [Bug 763931] User agent detected by Google Mail is Safari - says it's obsolete version
• Date: Sun, 20 Mar 2016 14:18:17 -0500

On Sun, 2016-03-20 at 14:39 -0400, George Kinal wrote:

Unfortunately the only listed schema that I see is
org.gnome.Epiphany.ui .

Are you sure? That would surely cause Epiphany to crash on start, so I
doubt you really have this problem. How did you decide that you only
have one Epiphany schema installed?

And, I have no idea whatsoever as to what path I need to include.
Apparently the user agent key is buried somewhere else in this
installation
(which is under Linux Mint 17 MATE).

Note, Linux Mint distributes very old, insecure versions of Epiphany
and WebKit, which are not safe to use. I strongly recommend using a
distribution that provides WebKit security updates: currently Fedora,
Mageia, and Arch are doing so.

George Kinal

PS Note: the warning that pops up in Google Mail says that it has
detected
an obsolete version of Safari, so that is the User Agent key being
reported
(but I can't find it anywhere).

As a WebKit browser, we have to include Safari or else a bunch of sites
break. Chrome has to do this too. :)

I will bump the Safari version in our UA, but I don't think it will fix
Google Mail, so I will add Chromium and a recent Chromium version to
the UA as well when visiting that site. Also, Linux Mint only updates
WebKit once every few years or so, and there will be another new Safari
version out by the time you get the change, I'm afraid.

You can follow that in this bug report:

https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=142074

Anyway, the easiest way to test your UA is to visit this site:

http://whatsmyuseragent.com/

The default user agent is constructed in WebKit, here:

http://trac.webkit.org/browser/trunk/Source/WebCore/platform/gtk/UserAg
entGtk.cpp

(Forgive the broken link, I can't figure out how to teach Evolution not
to insert link breaks in hyperlinks.) 

You can override it to whatever you want using this command:

$ gsettings set org.gnome.Epiphany user-agent "my user agent"

If you do choose to override it, then you can view the override with
this command:

$ gsettings get org.gnome.Epiphany user-agent
'my user agent'

You can reset it to the default value:

$ gsettings reset org.gnome.Epiphany user-agent

Verify that it's reset:

$ gsettings get org.gnome.Epiphany user-agent
''

(The default value of a setting is an empty string, in which case the
user agent is constructed by WebKit, then Epiphany appends its own
branding to the end of it. Some distros add their own branding as well;
yours will likely have some Ubuntu branding.)

Hope that helps,

Michael

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