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Here is a complete list of the 49 distinct Firefox 3 BETA User Agent that have visited my site from 2007-11-21 to 2008-05-03.

Firefox 3 BETA User Agent On Microsoft Windows

Firefox 3 BETA User Agent On Apple Mac

Firefox 3 BETA User Agent On Linux

You can see here how Firefox’s BETA testing program has really taken off as only a few user agent were from the first build 3.0b1, but the vast majority are from the latest 3.0b4 and 3.0b5 builds.

Firefox 3 has some really great features, I’ve already become addicited to the idea of Googling stuff directly from the address bar, and the ability to see detailed site information by clicking the favicon is a genuis idea. But I have yet to deduce how Site Owner information is derived in Firefox 3. It doesnt seem to come from OWNER or AUTHOR META tags, so I’m puzzled. Anyone got any ideas?

Here is the User Agent String for the new Gran Paradiso Alpha 1; the beta name of Mozilla’s Firefox 3:

There aren’t really any suprises in this user-agent, it’s pretty much as I expected. I’m looking forward to testing Gran Paradiso on different platforms as Mozilla claim that it’s new rendering engine, Cairo is…

“designed to produce identical output on all output media while taking advantage of display hardware acceleration when available.” - cairographics.org

Disappointly Mozilla havent mentioned anything about improved support for CSS2. Although improved system performance is always good, as a Web Developer I’m more interested 100% compliance with CSS2 or even partial support for CSS3 (which threatends to revolutionise the internet).

Developers won’t learn or use CSS3 unless browsers support it, what would be the point? As Internet Explorer is still the world’s de-facto browser, the internet as a whole is, in my opinion, being literally being held back by Microsoft’s total lack of interest in adhering to web-standards. Because of this more people are (very) gradually switching to Firefox. But Mozilla could really make a dent in Microsoft’s market share if they pushed the boat out and set their sights on CSS3.

Here is the User Agent String of The New Nokia N95 8GB Web Browser aka ‘N95 Mark II’:

It suprises me that its almost identical to the standard N95. The mark II has a different operating system build with what appears to be a much faster CPU and FSB (based on observations of its improved performance). So I expected the OS and Hardware builds to be different.

The default web browser has many new usability features making it feel slicker and if anything, more like Opera Mini. I expected this to be reflected in the Safari or Gecko build but they are the same also.

It seems therefore that Nokia have been able to make large changes to the phone’s hardware, operating system and default browser without much difficulty and that the standard model was simply an early release. Probably for marketing or market research reasons.

I think maybe the MIDP profile could’ve been upgraded to 2.1, bringing it upto the same standard as the Sony Ericsson K850i. But that’s a minor gripe.

The Nokia N95 8GB is an amazing phone! My friend even bought it pre-loaded with Spiderman 3; hi-res in stereo sound!

Here is the User Agent String of The Nokia N95 Web Browser:

As you can see, with the final statement it identifies itself as Safari.

But IT IS NOT SAFARI!!!

Nokia Series 60 (N95 is part of this family) browsers were built using the WebKit tool. Before the release of the Series 60 a hit on a web server from a WebKit browser would almost certainly be from a genuine Safari browser (as few other WebKit flavoured browsers were in wide-spread use). For this reason the too became synonymous to many people.

So much so that even major hit-tracking applications like Google Analytics register Nokia Series 60 / N95 hits as Safari version 413.

If you see any other Safari versions listed in Google Analytics they will almost certainly be genuine Safari hits.

Quite why Nokia have decided to add to this confusion but branding their browser as Safari is unclear. Other portable devices such as the Sony Ericsoon W800 identify themselves specifically as do games consoles such as the Playstation 3.

The decision may’ve been made to prevent browser-sniffing; this is the practise of serving up different pages to different browsers.

A large part of the N95’s appeal to me was its ability to render standard web pages with rich content very well on a small screen. Perhaps Nokia think this functionality would be diminished if it were often served up with streamlined pages written specifically for a phone when the user was expecting a standard page.