Mike Brittain

Just what do you suppose I should make of this user-agent string?  It’s real.  I found it in my logs today.

Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 5.1; Trident/4.0; GTB6.3; Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1) ; .NET CLR 1.1.4322; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 3.0.04506.30; .NET CLR 3.0.04506.648; .NET CLR 3.0.4506.2152; .NET CLR 3.5.30729)

Seriously.  We see “MSIE 7.0″ in there, which you would initially think of as Internet Explorer 7.  But of course, since we also see “Trident/4.0″, we can deduce that this is Internet Explorer 8 running in Compatibility View.  So what the hell is “MSIE 6.0″ still doing in here?

P.S. Thanks for including the version of .NET CLR… 6 different ways. That certainly is helpful.

Google has a page listing some details for webmasters about their new web browser.  My favorite part is in regards to handling application shortcuts which I figured out from Gmail’s site.  It’s a simple addition of “application-name” and “application-url” meta tags, along with a meta description and link to an icon file, which you probably already have on your site.

Application shortcuts are probably my favorite feature of Chrome, and the reason why I think that it is an important browser.  These shortcuts will help users and businesses to change their mindset about software-as-a-service applications.  They make web applications look like real software.  We used to have a desktop icon for Eudora or Outlook Express.  Now we have one for Gmail.  In the future, I suspect we’ll see more people replacing their installations of Microsoft Office with a shortcut to Google Docs, Zoho, ThinkFree, or Live Workspace.