Hi Malika,
Think about screaming frog and what it has to detect in order to do that correctly it needs the correct user agent syntax for it will not be able to make a crawl that would satisfy people.
Using a proper syntax for a user agent is essential and I have tried to be non-technical in this explanation I hope it works.
the reason screaming frog needs the user agent because the user-agent was added to HTTP to help web application developers deliver a better user experience. By respecting the syntax and semantics of the header, we make it easier and faster for header parsers to extract useful information from the headers that we can then act on.
Browser vendors are motivated to make web sites work no matter what specification violations are made. When the developers building web applications don’t care about following the rules, the browser vendors work to accommodate that. It is only by us application developers developing a healthy respect
When the developers building web applications don’t care about following the rules, the browser vendors work to accommodate that. It is only by us application developers developing a healthy respect
It is only by us application developers developing a healthy respect for the standards of the web, that the browser vendors will be able to start tightening up their codebase knowing that they don’t need to account for non-conformances.
For client libraries that do not enforce the syntax rules, you run the risk of using invalid characters that many server side frameworks will not detect. It is possible that only certain users, in particular, environments would identify the syntax violation. This can lead to difficult to track down bugs.
I hope this is a good explanation I've tried to keep it very to the point.
Respectfully,
Thomas