Title: Hacks: Tweak Firefox User Agent string
Slug: hacks-tweak-firefox-user-agent-string
Date: 2008-10-08 02:42:00
Author: Kartones
Lang: en
Tags: Tools, Development
Description: A guide on tweaking Firefox's user agent string to access hidden webpage content, with a caution on potential rendering issues.

 <p>Are you tired of finding lots of google results of webpages that when entered require you to register to view the solution?</p><p>Most of that sites do dirty tricks: They check the requesting User Agent, to allow search robots/crawlers to see the full contents (and index them), but limiting the rest of users to only the question and not the answers.</p><p>Well, we can play dirty too and take advantage of Firefox's ease of customization.</p><p>We type "<i>about:config</i>", right-click, new "<i>String</i>" value, name "<i>general.useragent.override</i>", value "<i>Googlebot/2.1 (+http://www.googlebot.com/bot.html)</i>" (Googlebot's user agent string).</p><p>Save, try your new user agent typing "<i>about:</i>" (should be the new identifier), and then there you go, hidden parts now available. </p><p>You can test <a href="http://www.experts-exchange.com/Web_Development/Miscellaneous/Q_22031739.html">with this page</a> for example (before and after tweaking the user agent).</p><p><b>Update</b>: Ezequiel said at the comments that there is an extension to easily handle user agent switching, <strong>User Agent Switcher</strong>. Thanks for the tip!<br></p><p><br><b>Note</b>: Be advised that changing the user agent to a non-common one may cause pages to not render correctly (or for example with limited JS or capabilities).</p>