Dear Brian et. al,

I know this has been repeated and talked about passionately in other threads. But all discussions inadvertantly gets deflected to a discussion about W3C standards, which is non-existent and beside the point. As a developer who has years of experience developing mobile content, I've seen a lot of interference (or screw-ups) by carriers. But none is so bad as to changing the mobile phone's User-Agent. So I would like to ask a question, point blank:

What is the rationale behind changing the User-Agent header?

Please do not mention W3C because the standard does not exist. Vodafone is the one doing it, so please answer as Vodafone. Don't act as if a standard already exists.

I do understand and actually somewhat appreciate your efforts to automatically transcode desktop websites, if what you say about increasing mobile web usage is true. The more people that are used to browsing on the phone, the better for the ecosystem as a whole.

You already provide publishers a way to tell the WTE not to transcode, some are based on standards (mobile web sites should send the proper Content-Type and DOCTYPE anyways). I do applaud the effort.

I am trying to think from your standpoint here. The one thing that I do not understand, is why you have to change the User-Agent. I would like you to also think from the standpoint of mobile website publishers.

Sites that are desktop-only will serve largely the same desktop content, no matter what the incoming User-Agent is. These sites can be transcoded by the WTE. These site owners may have no problem having their site transcoded, because by definition, they don't care to adapt their content to mobile devices. Even if they do detect the User-Agent for desktop browser capabilities, they probably don't care too much about browsers that are not PC or mainstream. In this case, what's the point of faking as a different User-Agent, as sending the phone's User-Agent will largely yield the same result?

Sites that adapt their content to mobile phones rely on the User-Agent to identify the incoming device. Adapting their content to specific devices are their bread and butter. By faking as a desktop PC, Vodafone is effectively fooling these sites, telling them to return desktop/non-adapted content, and have WTE ruin their carefully engineered and crafted markup and user interface specifically targeted to various mobile phones. Some of these pages may contain carefully placed ads, so money and revenue for these sites are at stake. Is there any wonder that you are incurring the wrath of all these mobile publishers? In this case, it is of course better off for everyone involved if you just leave the User-Agent alone.

So it seems to me that changing the User-Agent is pointless and harmful, from a technical standpoint. Telling us to read from a different header is completely beside the point. (Besides it is not a standard!) It just creates unnecessary inconveniences for mobile content publishers that should not be there in the first place.

Unless, well, you create the inconvenience for reasons other than a technical one. I won't go down that path just yet, and I want to hear what you have to say.

So, tell us, what is the rationale behind changing the User-Agent header?

Hi

Just for the record and to log the point that this is causing pain - the content adaption did screw up our download provsioning and caused client phone calls.

Guess we should be on the ball and monitoring the blogsphere more :-)

I can't imagine another part of the IT industry where this could happen.

Richard Spence
Bluetrail

not true. You know better than me that adapted web sites deliver a poor user experience on feature phones.



...so vodafone prefers to cheat to get content which the original content author did not mean to be served that way. Not very ethical, is it?



What are you talking about? Vodafone is blatantly ignoring standards, just because it is in the position to do so technically. Are you expecting us to buy this story? you can't be serious!



In this case, developers will be there to tell them to stop "polluting" the ecosystem.



well, all the voices say the same thing. Leave the user-agent string alone. So if you wanted to hear a voice, now that you have heard it, you can only do one thing: stop messing with basic mechanisms of the mobile Internet.

Luca

Brian, I gave several recommendations to achieve same if not better experience on the "I want my UA back" thread, and I got no replies to that. I will restate some of them here:

* the way I understand, you want to deliver "desktop web" to your *mobile* user, regardless of what the site OWNER wants to deliver?

* you can not guarantee content return from mobile UA? Well, you can try, and if it fails, you can ask for it again with the WEB UA.

* you could employ logic in your WTE, that if users "mark" the site as mobile-aware, you could let the mobile UA through for ALL FUTURE requests, i.e. and have a self adapting technique.

* and, of course, as others mention, you intentioanlly brake all unlisted content download (ringtones, wallpapers...) mobile-aware sites.

Regards,
Miha.

Sorry Brian,
but I think this is not the right reason for hiding the user-agent string.
In my opinion the content owner knows best what he wants to serve to mobile users and he shouuld be on the driving seat. If you apply as a rule what you just wrote you're actually making a choice on behalf of the user and of the content owner.

Sites that do adaptation are spending money to change the content to fit the mobile browser and spending more money in user interfaces and making sure that the approptiate content is served to users on the move. Mobile users will often have different needs from desktop users. It is correct to say that the "web technology" is the same, it is still HTTP and XHTML, but what you serve is different.
Take a look at the desktop site of Alitalia and then look at the mobile version. Don't you agree that the mobile version is providing the type of content that you would need while sitting in cab to the airport and the standard version is the one that you would need while at home planning your holidays? These two sites provide a different URL so users are allowed to make their choice based on the URL, but with device detection and content adaptation site owners can take advantage of a simple name that users can remember and always use the same and access the appropriate content based on the context (mobile or desktop). Want to call this "branding"?

Access Google Reader with your desktop browser, then access it with Opera mini on your phone and then access it with the browser that is pre-installed on your mobile (always without the help of WTE, of course). The first two will provide the same interface, on the desktop PC is very usable, on Opera-mini is un-usable. The last one will provide a different experience with the same content and will be optimized for your browser and your hardware and this means to your context: you're on the move, don't have a pointing device (in most case) most likely want to read the latest news, if this is the case (and it is for most mobile users).

- Andrea

Brian

I guess I hadn't appreciated that was your intention. I thought it was fall-out from your desire to avoid blocking behaviour.

In our work in the Mobile Web Best Practices Working Group, we ask people to consider the user's context and to provide a "Thematically Consistent" user experience, not necessarily the same user experience as they would experience were they using a desktop. The reason being that often the purpose of a Web site is better realised in a mobile context by tailoring the navigation and the content with mobile rather than desktop use cases in mind.

I think it is at best highly questionable for you to interfere with a Web site has specifically created an experience for the mobile user, and to thwart their intentions by deliberately misleading them as to the user's context.

Jo