<sect1 id="user-agent">

<sect1info>

<authorgroup>
<author>
<firstname>Krishna</firstname>
<surname>Tateneni</surname>
<affiliation><address><email>
tateneni@pluto.njcc.com
</email></address></affiliation>
</author>
</authorgroup>

<date>02/02/2001</date>
<releaseinfo>1.00.00</releaseinfo>

<keywordset>
<keyword>KDE</keyword>
<keyword>KControl</keyword>
<keyword>user agent</keyword>
</keywordset>

</sect1info>

<title>User Agent</title>

<sect2 id="user-agent-intro">

<title>Introduction</title>

<para>When &konqueror; connects to a web site to retrieve information, some
basic identifying information is sent to the web site in the form of a
<quote>User Agent</quote> header.</para>

<para>Because of minor differences in the way that different web browsers
function, web sites that rely too much on a single browser may sometimes not
display as intended when viewed using another browser. Some web sites are smart
enough to examine the contents of the user agent header and incorporate this
information in the <acronym>HTML</acronym> code so that the content is displayed
correctly regardless of the browser used.</para>

<para>However, you may find that some web sites refuse to function correctly
unless you are using a browser recognized as <quote>proper</quote> by that
site. In these cases, you may find it necessary to fool the web site by having
&konqueror; report itself to be another browser by means of the user agent
header.</para>

</sect2>

<sect2 id="user-agent-use">

<title>Use</title>

<para>In this module of the &kde; control center, you can configure the type of
browser that &konqueror; will report itself to be. You can control this
information by web site. Usually, the list box that is labeled
<guilabel>Configured useragent bindings:</guilabel> will be empty, so that
&konqueror; will always use its default useragent string.</para>

<para>To configure a new agent binding, type the name of the server or a domain
in the text box at the top of the page, which is labeled <guilabel>When
connecting to:</guilabel>. Note that you can <emphasis>not</emphasis> use the
wildcard character <token>*</token> in this text box. However, the string
<userinput>kde.org</userinput> will match all hosts in the domain
<systemitem>kde.org</systemitem>.</para>

<para>After typing the name of the server, type in the identifying string in the
next combo box, which is labeled <guilabel>Send useragent string:</guilabel> or
choose a string from the list. If you don't choose a string from the list, you
will need to know what a valid string from the browser looks like. For example,
you could type <userinput>Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE
4.0)</userinput>. </para>

<para>In the field labeled <guilabel>Alias for useragent string</guilabel> you
can enter a descriptive name for the configured binding, &eg;
<userinput>Netscape Navigator 4.75 on Linux</userinput> for the useragent string
<userinput>Mozilla/4.75 (X11; U; Linux 2.2.14 i686)</userinput>.</para>

<para>You can click on an existing entry in the <guilabel>Configured agent
bindings</guilabel> list, and then modify the contents of the text boxes,
followed by clicking <guibutton>Change</guibutton>.</para>

<para>Click the <guibutton>Add</guibutton> button to create a new user agent
binding. The <guibutton>Delete</guibutton> button can be used to delete the
selected entry in the list of configured agent bindings. The
<guibutton>Reset</guibutton> button will clear the upper text fields, but won't
touch the already configured bindings. Click <guibutton>Apply</guibutton> to
take your changes in effect.</para>

</sect2>

<sect2 id="user-agent-author">

<title>Section Author</title>

<para>This section written by: </para>
<para>Krishna Tateneni
<email>tateneni@pluto.njcc.com</email>.</para>
<para>Updated by Jost Schenck <email>jost@schenck.de</email>.</para>

</sect2>


</sect1>
