Krishna
Tateneni

    tateneni@pluto.njcc.com

2001-07-24
2.20.00
KDE
KControl
user agent

# User Agent

## Introduction

When &konqueror; connects to a web site to retrieve information, some basic identifying information is sent to the web site in the form of a User Agent header.

Because of minor differences in the way that different web browsers function, web sites that rely too much on a single browser may sometimes not display as intended when viewed using another browser. Some web sites are smart enough to examine the contents of the user agent header and incorporate this information in the HTML code so that the content is displayed correctly regardless of the browser used.

However, you may find that some web sites refuse to function correctly unless you are using a browser recognized as proper by that site. In these cases, you may find it necessary to fool the web site by having &konqueror; report itself to be another browser by means of the user agent header.

## Use

In this module of the &kde; control center, you can configure the type of browser that &konqueror; will report itself to be. You can control this information by web site. Usually, the list box that is labeled Configured useragent bindings: will be empty, so that &konqueror; will always use its default useragent string.

To configure a new agent binding, type the name of the server or a domain in the text box at the top of the page, which is labeled When connecting to:. Note that you can not use the wildcard character * in this text box. However, the string `kde.org` will match all hosts in the domain kde.org.

After typing the name of the server, type in the identifying string in the next combo box, which is labeled Send useragent string: or choose a string from the list. If you don't choose a string from the list, you will need to know what a valid string from the browser looks like. For example, you could type `Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 4.0)`.

In the field labeled Alias for useragent string you can enter a descriptive name for the configured binding, &eg; `Netscape Navigator 4.75 on Linux` for the useragent string `Mozilla/4.75 (X11; U; Linux 2.2.14 i686)`.

You can click on an existing entry in the Configured agent bindings list, and then modify the contents of the text boxes, followed by clicking Change.

Click the Add button to create a new user agent binding. The Delete button can be used to delete the selected entry in the list of configured agent bindings. The Reset button will clear the upper text fields, but won't touch the already configured bindings. Click Apply to take your changes in effect.

You can use the checkboxes at the top of the screen to build a user agent that is uniquely yours, by choosing your own combination of operating system name and version, platform, processor type, and language.

In all cases, the user agent that is being sent by default is displayed in bold text at the top of the page.

## Section Author

This section written by:

Krishna Tateneni tateneni@pluto.njcc.com.

Updated by Jost Schenck jost@schenck.de.