manfredkooistra - 8:59 pm on Feb 20, 2010 (gmt 0)

penders, with web surfers I mean people (not bots) accessing websites and viewing them, no matter which operating system, hardware or browser they use.

I have a website with frames. The file with the frameset writes the ip address and the user agent header into a database when it is called. One file within the frameset writes into the database as well, when it is called. It's a little bit more complicated than that, but basically I can see when one visitor called one file without the other. Of course every browser out there can call the framed file without the frameset it is contained in. But to call the frameset without calling the framed files as well you'll have to use a browser that does not support frames (like Lynx) or that does not call them -- by turning frames off.

Now, when I look at my database, I see very many visitors calling only the framset. Some of them are bots (Googlebot, Wget etc.), a few are mobile phone browsers, but quite a few come in with regular versions of IE or Mozilla. So I'm a bit curious about why they don't call the framed file.

If there was one visitor, I'd say that maybe he is using Tamper Data or the user agent header is forged and it is acually a bot, but I get about fifty of these visitors each day. Distinct visitors from widely varying IP addresses.

So I'm curious about what is happening.