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internet-explorer-11user-agent

difference between the user agent strings


what is the difference between the following user agent strings

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; WOW64; Trident/7.0; rv:11.0) like Gecko

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.3; WOW64; Trident/7.0; .NET4.0E; .NET4.0C; rv:11.0) like Gecko

I am currently trying to debug a JS issue specific to IE and while debugging noticed that there are these 2 varying user agent strings, for windows 10 and IE 11.

Also, additionally, the user agent some times has Gecko/20100101 like in the string Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:70.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/70.0, does presence of Gecko/20100101 indicate that its a Desktop always?

Thanks.


Solution

  • Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; WOW64; Trident/7.0; rv:11.0) like Gecko

    By default, Internet Explorer 11 on Windows 10 sends the above User-Agent string:

    Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.3; WOW64; Trident/7.0; .NET4.0E; .NET4.0C; rv:11.0) like Gecko

    By default, Internet Explorer 11 on Windows 8.1 sends the following User-Agent string:

    Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.3; Trident/7.0; rv:11.0) like Gecko
    

    Internet Explorer 11 continues the IE9 tradition of exposing extensible tokens in the navigator.userAgent property but not sending those tokens in the request header. For instance, by default this property returns the following on IE11/Win8.1:

    Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.3; Trident/7.0; .NET4.0E; .NET4.0C; rv:11.0) like Gecko
    

    The .NET tokens here were pulled from the registry and allow JavaScript to detect that the .NET Framework is installed on the computer. (They’re a bit misleading because Windows 8.1 includes the 4.5 version of the Framework.)

    More detail information, please check the User Agent and Internet Explorer 11’s Many User-Agent String.

    The UA string of Firefox itself is broken down into four components:

    Mozilla/5.0 (platform; rv:geckoversion) Gecko/geckotrail Firefox/firefoxversion
    

    Gecko/geckotrail indicates that the browser is based on Gecko.

    On Desktop, geckotrail is the fixed string "20100101".

    More detail information about Firefox user agent string, please check the Firefox user agent string reference.

    Edit:

    [Note] In Windows, Macintosh, Linux, Firefox for Maemo (Nokia N900), Camino on Mac, SeaMonkey on Windows, SeaMonkey on Mac and SeaMonkey on Linux, the Firefox user agent string contains "20100101".