Do IIS logs indicate whether or not users have Silverlight installed?

Question

Google Analytics cannot tell me if people hitting my site have Silverlight installed unless I use something like Silverlight.js mentioned here. I was wondering if I could get this information from server logs instead? Would the user-agent string (or some other property) in IIS logs indicate whether or not a user has Silverlight installed?

Answer 1

You can see exactly what the browser is sending to your web server by doing the following:

1. In IE, press F12 to open the Developer Tools.
2. Click on the "Network" tab.
3. Click the "Start capturing" button.
4. Navigate to any web page. (You will see some HTTP requests show up in the list.)
5. Click on any of the requests.
6. Click the "Go to detailed view" button.
7. Click on the "Request headers" tab.

What you see on this view is all of the data that the web server receives from your browser. Unfortunately, there is no indication of whether the client has Silverlight, so no server-side logs will be able to tell you this.

You will need to use a client-side script.