Mobile/PSP Indicator Posting in Actual Post?

[telefonica]

Greetings-

I searched a bit but couldn't find anything on this; I know I'm probably looking up the wrong terms but I am just merely wondering if there is any code that would display in a thread whether or not you are posting from a mobile device. I use my PSP to check my forums often and was wondering if there was any coding akin to Facebook that would automatically display at the bottom of a post if you made that from a mobile device.

Just wondering.

Thanks for your time,
Tele

[Chris]

Such a code would be ambitious at the very least since distinguishing between a mobile and a regular browser is not as easy as it sounds.
There's a code in the database that could be easily modified to add detection for PSP [Mozilla/4.0 (PSP (PlayStation Portable); 2.00)].
The problem however would be to detect and identify the (literally hundreds of) different mobile user-agents in use now and in the future. This would require constant updating of the code every time something changed!
Since a well-defined standard for constructing user-agents is almost non-existent there's really no single pattern in a UA string that would immediately identify it as a mobile

• Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 3_1_2 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/528.18 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile/7D11 Safari/528.16
  
• BlackBerry9630/4.7.1.40 Profile/MIDP-2.0 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 VendorID/105
  
• Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 4.01; Windows CE; PPC; 240x320; HP iPAQ h6300)
  
• Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; U; Android 2.1; en-us; Nexus One Build/ERD62) AppleWebKit/530.17 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile Safari/530.17
  
• BenQ-CF61/1.00/WAP2.0/MIDP2.0/CLDC1.0 UP.Browser/6.3.0.4.c.1.102 (GUI) MMP/2.0
  
• Opera/9.50 (J2ME/MIDP; Opera Mini/4.0.10031/298; U; en) ^{(blackberry running opera!)}
  
• HTC-ST7377/1.59.502.3 (67150) Opera/9.50 (Windows NT 5.1; U; en) UP.Link/6.3.1.17.0
  

As you can see, there really is no single thing a code would be able to look for in order to determine if it's a mobile. The alternative of identifying what is NOT a mobile isn't that much easier either.

The bright side however is that Proboards V5 will officially cater to mobile browsers so when that's released there should be a much easier way to identify mobiles. I suspect it would be much simpler for a server to examine the request header for evidence of wml support.

edit: hehe

---

History of the browser user-agent string

September 3, 2008
by Aaron Andersen


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.

[David Clark]

Haha, that's great.