I found this useful and up-to-date article to detect browser in JavaScript. Please refer to the author’s site page for detailed explanation. The site (http://www.quirksmode.org/) perhaps is the best one on browser compatibility comparisons and explanations. Use at your own risk and also pay attention to author comment which says:
“This script will only continue to work if you regularly check whether newer browsers still follow the rules set forth in the dataBrowser and dataOS arrays.”
Here is the main detect class:
var BrowserDetect = {
init: function () {
this.browser = this.searchString(this.dataBrowser) || "An unknown browser";
this.version = this.searchVersion(navigator.userAgent)
|| this.searchVersion(navigator.appVersion)
|| "an unknown version";
this.OS = this.searchString(this.dataOS) || "an unknown OS";
},
searchString: function (data) {
for (var i=0;i<data.length;i++) {
var dataString = data[i].string;
var dataProp = data[i].prop;
this.versionSearchString = data[i].versionSearch || data[i].identity;
if (dataString) {
if (dataString.indexOf(data[i].subString) != -1)
return data[i].identity;
}
else if (dataProp)
return data[i].identity;
}
},
searchVersion: function (dataString) {
var index = dataString.indexOf(this.versionSearchString);
if (index == -1) return;
return parseFloat(dataString.substring(index+this.versionSearchString.length+1));
},
dataBrowser: [
{
string: navigator.userAgent,
subString: "Chrome",
identity: "Chrome"
},
{ string: navigator.userAgent,
subString: "OmniWeb",
versionSearch: "OmniWeb/",
identity: "OmniWeb"
},
{
string: navigator.vendor,
subString: "Apple",
identity: "Safari",
versionSearch: "Version"
},
{
prop: window.opera,
identity: "Opera"
},
{
string: navigator.vendor,
subString: "iCab",
identity: "iCab"
},
{
string: navigator.vendor,
subString: "KDE",
identity: "Konqueror"
},
{
string: navigator.userAgent,
subString: "Firefox",
identity: "Firefox"
},
{
string: navigator.vendor,
subString: "Camino",
identity: "Camino"
},
{ // for newer Netscapes (6+)
string: navigator.userAgent,
subString: "Netscape",
identity: "Netscape"
},
{
string: navigator.userAgent,
subString: "MSIE",
identity: "Explorer",
versionSearch: "MSIE"
},
{
string: navigator.userAgent,
subString: "Gecko",
identity: "Mozilla",
versionSearch: "rv"
},
{ // for older Netscapes (4-)
string: navigator.userAgent,
subString: "Mozilla",
identity: "Netscape",
versionSearch: "Mozilla"
}
],
dataOS : [
{
string: navigator.platform,
subString: "Win",
identity: "Windows"
},
{
string: navigator.platform,
subString: "Mac",
identity: "Mac"
},
{
string: navigator.userAgent,
subString: "iPhone",
identity: "iPhone/iPod"
},
{
string: navigator.platform,
subString: "Linux",
identity: "Linux"
}
]
};
BrowserDetect.init();And here is the sample usage:
if(BrowserDetect.browser=="Firefox") {
//do this
} elseif (BrowserDetect.browser=="Explorer") {
//do that
}
I strongly recommend to take some free time to read the original article.
