In the beginning there was NCSA Mosaic, and Mosaic called itself NCSA_Mosaic/2.0 (Windows 3.1), and Mosaic displayed pictures along with text, and there was much rejoicing.
And behold, then came a new web browser known as “Mozilla”, being short for “Mosaic Killer,” but Mosaic was not amused, so the public name was changed to Netscape, and Netscape called itself Mozilla/1.0 (Win3.1), and there was more rejoicing. And Netscape supported frames, and frames became popular among the people, but Mosaic did not support frames, and so came “user agent sniffing” and to “Mozilla” webmasters sent frames, but to other browsers they sent not frames.
And Netscape said, let us make fun of Microsoft and refer to Windows as “poorly debugged device drivers,” and Microsoft was angry. And so Microsoft made their own web browser, which they called Internet Explorer, hoping for it to be a “Netscape Killer”. 
And Internet Explorer supported frames, and yet was not Mozilla, and so was not given frames. And Microsoft grew impatient, and did not wish to wait for webmasters to learn of IE and begin to send it frames, and so Internet Explorer declared that it was “Mozilla compatible” and began to impersonate Netscape, and called itself Mozilla/1.22 (compatible; MSIE 2.0; Windows 95), and Internet Explorer received frames, and all of Microsoft was happy, but webmasters were confused.
And Microsoft sold IE with Windows, and made it better than Netscape, and the first browser war raged upon the face of the land. 
And behold, Netscape was killed, and there was much rejoicing at Microsoft. But Netscape was reborn as Mozilla, and Mozilla built Gecko, and called itself Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.1) Gecko/20020826, and Gecko was the rendering engine, and Gecko was good. 
And Mozilla became Firefox, and called itself Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; sv-SE; rv:1.7.5) Gecko/20041108 Firefox/1.0, and Firefox was very good. And Gecko began to multiply, and other browsers were born that used its code, and they called themselves Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X Mach-O; en-US; rv:1.7.2) Gecko/20040825 Camino/0.8.1 the one, and Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; de; rv:1.8.1.8) Gecko/20071008 SeaMonkey/1.0 another, each pretending to be Mozilla, and all of them powered by Gecko.
And Gecko was good, and IE was not, and sniffing was reborn, and Gecko was given good web code, and other browsers were not. 
And the followers of Linux were much sorrowed, because they had built Konqueror, whose engine was KHTML, which they thought was as good as Gecko, but it was not Gecko, and so was not given the good pages, and so Konquerer began to pretend to be “like Gecko” to get the good pages, and called itself Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Konqueror/3.2; FreeBSD) (KHTML, like Gecko) and there was much confusion.
Then cometh Opera and said, “surely we should allow our users to decide which browser we should impersonate,” and so Opera created a menu item, and Opera called itself Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; en) Opera 9.51, or Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.0; U; en; rv:1.8.1) Gecko/20061208 Firefox/2.0.0 Opera 9.51, or Opera/9.51 (Windows NT 5.1; U; en) depending on which option the user selected.
And Apple built Safari, and used KHTML, but added many features, and forked the project, and called it WebKit, but wanted pages written for KHTML, and so Safari called itself Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X; de-de) AppleWebKit/85.7 (KHTML, like Gecko) Safari/85.5, and it got worse.
And Microsoft feared Firefox greatly, and Internet Explorer returned, and called itself Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 8.0; Windows NT 6.0) and it rendered good code, but only if webmasters commanded it to do so.
And then Google built Chrome, and Chrome used Webkit, and it was like Safari, and wanted pages built for Safari, and so pretended to be Safari. And thus Chrome used WebKit, and pretended to be Safari, and WebKit pretended to be KHTML, and KHTML pretended to be Gecko, and all browsers pretended to be Mozilla, and Chrome called itself Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US) AppleWebKit/525.13 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/0.2.149.27 Safari/525.13, and the user agent string was a complete mess, and near useless, and everyone pretended to be everyone else, and confusion abounded.
If only they had included a list of feature codes rather than a browser identifier then all this would never have happened (actually, it probably would because different implementations behave differently, but the sentiment is what counts…).
“as a web developer, test for the features you want rather than sniffing for a browser that you think might be the one that has them.â€
If only browsers broadcast their features in the headers, instead of having to rely on JS sniffing…
I am just curious when the flood is coming to wash away all the impure
Through my laughter I’ve got to point out that Opera (with its user selectable User Agent strings) came along before Firefox. I think it was Opera 3.0 that had the selection, but that was long ago.
And then there was Cello. Wait. There was never Cello, there is only Mosaic and it’s profane, inbred offspring.
Brilliant!
I miss the old Mosaic days. Everything was so simple.
The days of Mosaic were better. My old motto: “If you can’t write your own web browser, you shouldn’t be on the internet”.
hahahahaha mto bom! mto bom mesmo!
Funny stuff! The only thing missing is a few instances of ‘this begat that’…
Opera was MUCH earlier (6 years) than Firefox.
Funny
Aaaaaaawesooooome!
Bis …
“based on a true story”
Wuh! Funny! If only Chrome had the ability to run Firefox add-ons until they get their own, I’d use a lot more.
Great! I can only hope that UA sniffing some day will be obsolete. But, yes, i know, paradise is lost since ages.
[...] WebAIM: Blog – History of the browser user-agent string (tags: mozilla humor) [...]
And the story is probably not over… (unfortunately)
I know who I am!
I’m the dude playin the dude disguised as another dude!
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0942385/
Hey, Camino (Camaro) came before Firefox (Firebird).
Quote:
“And Apple built Safari, and used KHTML, but added many features, and forked the project, and called it WebKit, but wanted pages written for KHTML, and so Safari called itself Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X; de-de) AppleWebKit/85.7 (KHTML, like Gecko) Safari/85.5, and it got worse.”
I would change the phrase “…and it got worse” to the following:
“…and, lo, there was much weeping and gnashing of teeth.”
Otherwise, this is a fantastic post. Thanks for the laugh!
This is absolutely fantastic!
In the distant harmonious future all browsers will unite as one and the User Agent will be Teh Intarwebnets Browser (1.0).
If this is the New Testament of user-agent strings, shouldn’t the conclusion assume there will be a messiah which ushers in a 1000-year kingdom on the web?
Like Jesuser-agent string that forgives the sins of Internet Explorer and redeems bad rendering engines.
Awesome!
LOL!
This is really funny.
It seems that, there will be forever no ending problem when comes to cross browser compatible. All the browser seems to claim to have compatibility of all the rest, but there are still differences which make it a headache for developer.
And, developer would have to check compatibility from the latest browser down to the core browser that those browser was trying to be compatible with… bah ..
Here endeth the lesson.
LoL briliant
i wonder how user-agent next 10 years, maybe it will consume 1 paragraph
Ok, that’s all folks ^^
Excellent!
Such an humorous article! Thanks for sharing this “biblical revelation” Aaron!
Wat if we (webmaster and browser builders) would all agree that we start to use the user agent string for a supported browser feature list starting from today?
Actually, in the beginning Tim Berners-Lee created the web and the browser, and they were called “World Wide Web,” and they were good.
Educational and entertaining. I always wondered why all the UA strings had “Mozilla” in them and now I know.
I will pass this on to my children, and them to theirs.
Sorry…
I have some problems with mozila.
It doesn’t support continuation download after interruption, start from beginning.
Is there some decision of this problem?
[...] WebAIM: Blog – History of the browser user-agent string Funny history of the user-agent string used by browsers. (tags: humor browser geek user-agent) [...]
cheers for that one. brightened up my day, and convinced one of our developers to get rid of his
sorry< prt II:
user-agent-string.
Genius!!
Let it not be forgotten that Mozilla was developed by members of the Mosaic team who lusted after mammon, and that the anger of Mosaic was the anger of Moses upon finding the Israelites worshipping the golden calf. Those who stayed true to Mosaic eventually joined the root of all mammon-related-evil when Microsoft had said “let there be IE” and lo and saw that it was bad, and said “OK, let there be IE 3.0 and let it be developed by those guys who made Mosaic” and lo, it was better than Mozilla and it did not partake of the blink.
And yea the servers are known as towers, and they are located in Babylon…
Verily I say unto you, this is the word. Know thy word as you seek to dwell in the world and you will not be led astray. For the path hath many versions. And versions begat acronyms. Place your trust in the word and rejoice.
[...] WebAIM: Blog – History of the browser user-agent string (tags: useragent browser humor mozilla browsers standards user-agent) [...]
Funniest thing I’ve read all week. XD
Hey – if you’re using firefox – type “about:mozilla” in your address bar.
Great stuff, man…truly. ROTFLMAO.
[...] browsers, mess, web History of the browser user-agent string « [...]
Well said, finally all want to be Mozilla, but with a different name.
Nice article.
NIC! Nice article!
very nice, thx for that much fun