It’s 2011 and I would have thought the World Wide Web would be browser agnostic by now. Unfortunately there are some developers that simply can not design or code for a cross platform/browser world. Because of that developers have had to create browser add-on’s to help get around the issues.
Many of you have most likely heard of the Firefox add on called User Agent Switcher. What this add on does is trick web sites into thinking your Firefox browser is something it isn’t. You can even user this add on to trick the web site into thinking you are on a different operating system.
The only problem with this add on is that the included profiles are somewhat limited to: Internet Explorer 8 on Windows 7, Netscape 4.8 on Windows Vista, and Opera 10.50 on Windows 7. This doesn’t help the Linux user all that much. The typical Linux user will need more than that. There are times you are going to need to either see a site on a different OS/Browser combo for developing purposes or switch to a different browser just to actually access a site. Fortunately the developers of User Agent Switcher made it possible to import profiles. Let’s take a look to see how this is done in Linux.
The first thing you need to do is install user agent switcher. This is such a simple task that most of you will know how to achieve this goal. Once the add on is installed (and Firefox is restarted) click on the Tools menu to reveal the new menu entry for the User Agent Switcher.
Click on the Options entry to open up the window that will allow you to import profiles. In the new window click on the User Agents “tab” to open up the section that allows you to handle the imports.
From the new window (see the image to the right) click on the Import button (but do NOT click the Overwrite button or you’ll lose the current profiles) to import new profiles.
Once you click that button a browse window will open for you to find the profiles to import. The next question is where do you get profiles? The best profile list I have been able to find is here. Once you have the file located on your hard drive click the Import button, locate the file, and click Open.
Now when you look at the listing of possible user agents you will see around 50 possible selections to use.
Download User Agent Switcher
The User Agent Switcher extension adds a menu and a toolbar button to switch the user agent of the browser.
Download From FireFox Add-ons website.
Download From chrispederick.com.
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