Episode: 4516
Title: Browser User Agent
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr4516/hpr4516.mp3
Transcribed: 2026-07-31 16:13:04 (official HPR transcript)

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This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 4516, for 2025-11-24
Today's show is entitled, "Browser User Agent"
The host is Henrik Hemrin and the duration is 00:04:55
The flag is Clean, and the license is CC-BY-SA
The summary is "A web site did not work for me. The User Agent has an important role."
Welcome to Hacker Public Radio. My name is Henry Kimlin and I'm your host today.
A while ago I visited a website that is an archive for old historical documents.
It is a database from where documents can be downloaded as PDF files.
As a visitor, I can login to the archive as a guest.
When I find a document of interest of the search, I can write click on the PDF icon and download the document.
But I can not. No download starts when I click on the PDF icon.
This is the first time I visit this archive so I do not know exactly how it works.
It was time to investigate the root course. I use Firefox browser on a Linux machine.
I tested several methods to see if any would solve the issue. I tried by changing settings for
pop-ups. I changed Firefox security settings. I disabled VPN. I disabled Firefox extensions
for blocking game trackers. I tested also the Chromium browser as well as the Epiphany browser.
All those methods resulted in no difference. Nothing happened.
I was in contact with a friend on Windows and also staff at the archive. Both telling me that
from Windows it worked, including with Firefox. So now I knew the archive works and that it works on
Firefox. So I thought, can this somehow be related to Linux?
I asked in a Linux forum if someone on Linux could test to download.
One person in the forum tested and solved the problem. I would not define it as a Linux problem,
but the site designed that affected Linux uses. The trouble was something I had not thought of
the user agent. When my browser contacted website, my browser can tell the site what kind of
browser I use which operating system I use and more. This information can be used by the site to
optimize the presentation of the content for me. For to me, unknown reason, maybe a mistake,
maybe related to some old design compatibility issue, this site did not accept the information
my user agent provided. The solution is to tell the website I'm something else.
In the browser, there are developers tools. When opening the developer tools from the menu,
typically a developer window with tools and analytics is opened at the bottom part of the web page.
One tool is network. Within network, I can simulate how the site looks on different devices
with different networks connections and I can also choose different user agents.
The tools are similar in both Firefox and Chromium. The exact list of standard options,
different and Chromium has more options pre-loaded. In this specific case, when I,
in developers on Firefox, change user agent to Chrome desktop, which relates to Chrome on Windows
as I understand and then reload the web page, I can now download the PDF file from the archive.
When this website interprets me to be this other type of user, they can understand each other
without any issue. I have reported back to the site owner and hopefully this specific site will not
need this workaround for the browser user agent in the future. Thank you for listening,
take care and goodbye.
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