helpresearch said

But does a user-agent do anything else technically to the browser? e.g.

>Does User-Agent control if a user-script that requires xx can use xx (where xx = https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.8.3/jquery.min.js). I can run this userscript successfully using GreaseMonkey in Fx but it fails to run in Fluid App. Fluid has userscripts embedded into the app, no plug-in is required.

I can't answer about Fluid, but Firefox itself cannot be fooled by what you specify as your user agent. For example, it queries the OS to know what OS it is running on, and it knows it is Firefox.

I think most userscripts are designed with limited environments in mind, such as Greasemonkey and Scriptish on Firefox (and maybe Waterfox and Pale Moon), Tampermonkey on Chrome, and maybe one or two others at most. Fine points of the user agent string probably don't matter.

>Does User-Agent control how low I can zoom. Current zoom level is restricted to 50% with below user agent. Most unhelpful.

Again, I don't think so. But you might have success changing this setting in Firefox:

(1) In a new tab, type or paste about:config in the address bar and press Enter/Return. Click the button promising to be careful.

(2) In the search box above the list, type or paste zoom and pause while the list is filtered

(3) Double-click the zoom.minPercent preference and try entering a lower minimum (e.g., 25 for 25%).

The latest version of Fluid is 1.8.3, which I recently purchased. By default I opened user agent and it shows this:

Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_10_3) AppleWebKit/0600.5.17 (KHTML, like Gecko) FluidApp Version/1955 Safari/0600.5.17

No idea what this user-agent is really telling me. I am on OSX yosemite 10.10.3, I use the latest FX (38 recently upgraded this week) and I do not use Safari.

My guess is that Fluid wants website that don't recognize FluidApp to treat it just like Safari or any other Webkit browser (Safari and Chrome are the popular Webkit-based browsers).

Thankyou jscher2000 That is truelly a wonderfully helpful answer. Very Much Appreciated.

Thankyou also for the config. I am finding I am using about:config more and more these days. I wondered is there a means to "tag" the entry I have touched, so then I can see a summary of all the entries I have "touched"?

thankyou

Hi helpresearch, the preferences you modify in about:config, and those that Firefox modifies as you use the interface, are stored in a file named prefs.js. If you want to back up that file, or take a look at it, you can open its folder using either

• "3-bar" menu button > "?" button > Troubleshooting Information
• (menu bar) Help > Troubleshooting Information
• type or paste about:support in the address bar and press Enter

In the first table on the page, click the "Show in Finder" button. This should launch a new window listing various files and folders among which you will find prefs.js.

I should note that Firefox has lots of settings files, and some specific things, like which toolbars are visible, are stored in other files in that same folder.

Oh, also, if you click the Status column heading in about:config, all the "user set" preferences will group together. Some of these are actually set by Firefox or add-ons as you run the program, I don't think there is a way to distinguish the ones you actually set yourself.

See:

• http://kb.mozillazine.org/Zoom_text_of_web_pages

• http://kb.mozillazine.org/browser.zoom.full
• http://kb.mozillazine.org/browser.zoom.siteSpecific

• http://kb.mozillazine.org/toolkit.zoomManager.zoomValues

• http://kb.mozillazine.org/zoom.minPercent
• http://kb.mozillazine.org/zoom.maxPercent

thank you. changing config helps with my fx zoom. had no impact in fluid, even though I manually set user agent to Firefox. I noticed in fluid it is not showing Firefox user agent as 38 but still 31. maybe that is problem. I do not know enough about these "user agent things" to understand what us going on.

I wondered also, this thing the userscript requires "https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.8.3/jquery.min.js)". it is available in Firefox abd I tested yesterday this userscript that usrs this thing also works in safari latest by loading it with tampermonkey.

so now I am more unclear. it is because I have no background I suspect in web browser technology.

what is this thing "https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.8.3/jquery.min.js)"

and how does a curious cat like me, work out all these extra bits that Firefox has access to but not Fluid.

I am asking this also because another desire I have is generate a notification that gets passed to OSX notification. That would be cool to do this in Firefox. I noticed when I was in safari yesterday, that this is already there, standard. So I wondered will Firefox add this feature soon? or will it be an addon using the WebKit technology?

Thankyou again for sharing your knowledge. Much appreciated.

helpresearch said

I wondered also, this thing the userscript requires "https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.8.3/jquery.min.js)". it is available in Firefox abd I tested yesterday this userscript that usrs this thing also works in safari latest by loading it with tampermonkey.

so now I am more unclear. it is because I have no background I suspect in web browser technology.

what is this thing "https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.8.3/jquery.min.js)"

The @require in a userscript imports additional code into the script. That particular one pulls in a copy of jquery.min.js from a Google server. jQuery is a popular JavaScript library that provides a lot of convenient shortcuts to script writers. However, if Fluid doesn't allow or doesn't honor @require then those scripts that depend on it will not work. Maybe they have some documentation on how their script interpreter works.

helpresearch said

I am asking this also because another desire I have is generate a notification that gets passed to OSX notification. That would be cool to do this in Firefox. I noticed when I was in safari yesterday, that this is already there, standard. So I wondered will Firefox add this feature soon?

What kind of notification? There might be an extension on the Add-ons site for that if there are no scripts that can do it.

https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/

What kind of notification?

Thankyou jscher2000. I looked and keep looking for an add-on but nothing so far that enables OSX notifications to come through from websites I am accessing using Firefox38.

There are many examples that I would make use of it. I essentially love OSX notifications as you can choose alert or banner. And They all come up on top right and do not interrupt my workflow.

For example: 1) many community sites I visit, have lists of information, and I keep going to check to see if there are new items. I would much rather be notified via OSX of a notification. 2) This support forum (which I love). I receive the notification via email. Would be better to notify me by OSX notification if I am online (less traffic going to my email account) 3) I use a multicloud service (online only) so I can move data from box to dropbox. I would like notifications when transfer complete. Dropbox provides OSX notifications when things delete from dropbox (so I have moved from dropbox to somewhere else) but no notification for new file added.

These are just a few. The big difference is now with OSX notifications, this is my primary form of notifier I like. Where before it was email.

I did find X-notifier, an add-on that has heaps of userscripts. But all these are for webmails. I use gmail/osx mail so OSX notifications are already provided.

Thankyou for all your help. It is greatly appreciated and inspiring to me, that I can come here for help.