In the same way one can TCP-fingerprint an OS, I'm sure I could spend a little more effort and fingerprint the real browser based on HTTP behavior, but I don't think it's worth it....

I can't believe it's more than a few percent.

(I only use Mozilla on Linux, so I'm no pro-IE junkie, either... I'm just being realistic....)

I don't think it's more than a few percent either, but all I'm saying is that I don't _know_, and neither does anyone else unless they do as you propose (on a large traffic site that's accessible to all browsers - can you think of anything like that?) - and that to some degree our perceptions of what's realistic are informed by the common view that's based purely on bogus data from User-Agent (and often also on counting all HTTP requests, which plays down text browsers, and sometimes from sites that only work well with IE!), and so our idea of what's realistic might actually be quite wrong.

BTW, while I'm bypassing the proper channels to bug you about stuff, can I ask if all this new styles stuff is likely to make it feasible for users to view other people's comments pages (and ideally journals) in a style of their choosing?

[I'm only one person, but the day you implement that, I'll be a paid user. :-]

I wonder if Google's Zeitgeist takes into account user-agent spoofing. They'd be the ideal people to publish accurate numbers.

S2 will let you, yes, but all S2 stuff is on hold for performance work right now. I figure I'll resume S2 in a week.

I think we decided there will be an option, "[ ] Show friends' entries in my style", which will turn all links on your friends page into having "?style=mine". And that style=mine will work on any S1 or S2 URL as well.

I predict, by the way, that you will face a storm of protest from people bemoaning their inability to make other people view their revolting styles.