Things you can detect about the client

The HTTP protocol specifies that the client sends a header with information about its browser software and display settings to the server with each page request. The server can read that information and act upon it. The server can be programmed to return different results depending upon the client characteristics and it can gather statistics about the characteristics of the clients visiting the Web site.

Characteristics of the client software and configuration

Note that all browsers may not implement every field. When I viewed this page using Firefox on my laptop, I saw several undefined fields:

Characteristics of the client software and configuration

CodeName=Mozilla
MinorVersion=undefined
Name=Netscape
Version=5.0 (Windows; en-US)
CookieEnabled=true
CPUClass=undefined
OnLine=true
Platform=Win32
UA=Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.0.6) Gecko/20060728 Firefox/1.5.0.6
BrowserLanguage=undefined
SystemLanguage=undefined
UserLanguage=undefined

Characteristics of the client display

Screen resolution: 1920*1200
Available view area: 1920*1162
Color depth: 32
Buffer depth: undefined
DeviceXDPI: undefined
DeviceYDPI: undefined
LogicalXDPI: undefined
LogicalYDPI: undefined
FontSmoothingEnabled: undefined
PixelDepth: 32
UpdateInterval: undefined

Note that my laptop display is 1920 by 1200 pixels.

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