Google has added “unsupported browser” warnings for Edge Chromium on Google Docs | Hacker News Reader

Google has added “unsupported browser” warnings for Edge Chromium on Google Docs

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Personally, I think this could just be chalked up to UA string parsing issues. Not worth the trouble for Google to kick up a storm over a marginal market share browser.

Certain commenters suggested that the exact partial UA string identifying Edge was blacklisted. I'd love to see a more detailed analysis.

I mean UA strings are such a mess. I can't even imagine what it must be for a browser called "edge chromium"...

It depends on the website [0]. Which I guess means that Microsoft is going to add Google Docs to list of special cases where they need to pretend to be a different browser.

[0] https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/microsoft/the-new-micr...

This is why the UA contains "Edg/" not "Edge" to prevent issues like this.

It could just be there is a whitelist for Google Docs, like on Google Meet:

https://www.theverge.com/2019/4/26/18518346/google-meet-micr...

But the bigger point is why are they even sniffing UA strings?

Google, who advocates for everybody else that you should use standards and proper feature detection, still relies on UA whitelists for their own products.

Then look at google.com homepage itself... not responsive, not in any way modern... many of their own sites perform terribly by their own guidance to other devs.

Google's hypocrisy is sickening and I'm tired of their "we own the web, do what we say" attitude.

Why of course they do this. This is meant to boost market share and scare the tech-illiterate into using Chrome. And it works.

Unsupported browser is a bit of a joke anyways in times of modern web standards...

But how do you support a browser that hasn't been released yet? Give them some time.

That's... not how the web is supposed to work.

Until the day 100% of browsers support 100% of features with 100% correct implementations, or we have only one browser, it will keep working like this.

They could just use feature detection instead and will see that the browser actually supports all the features they're using! ️

They shouldn't whitelist known user agents, but use feature detection.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feature_detection_(web_develop...

Why are people assuming that they don't use feature detection just because they have a warning based on UA-sniffing?

Saying that an unknown browser is "unsupported browser" is not the same as saying that "it will break. we will deliberately disable the feature". All it means is "We don't know what this browser is. We have never tested on it. we will not pay as much attention is this unknown browser break".

Just because a browser passes features detection doesn't mean they don't have bugs or weird behaviors.

Why do people assume that Google doesn't both, using feature detection to enable features and also display warning if the user is user some browser they don't know and can't guarantee that they ever test on it.

Firefox mobile already pretends to be Chrome for several Google websites.

Edge Chromium explicitly uses a new User-Agent string so websites see it as Chromium, not as Edge (it does not even contain "Edge", only "Edg").

And yet, Google intentionally works against any browser except their own.

This sounds like a new chapter in https://webaim.org/blog/user-agent-string-history/

This came up a few days ago and it turns out Microsoft changed Edge's user agent in the latest update which triggered the message in Google's apps. This is likely a non-issue and will be corrected soon. Keep in mind that Edge is in beta so mistakes will happen.

Still, why is Google of all companies sniffing User Agents instead of using feature detection, like they preach?

For me, I was using google docs with no warning, then I noticed Edge needed an update, and after the update I got the warning.

Not sure if it was MS changing something or Google changing something?

Microsoft also made a new version of Skype web app that only supports Chrome and Edge. The browser wars are back.

waiting for plugin to edge chrome making google docs to be ms office or look like

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