Using javascript to detect browser type

Question

I'm trying to use this line to detect browser type: IE or Firefox.

alert(isBrowser("Microsoft"));

but I get absolutely nothing, the alert doesn't even pop up. Not sure what I'm doing wrong.

What would be the best practice way to detect browser type?

Answer 1

I hope this helps:

http://www.quirksmode.org/js/detect.html

(it's a long script, so i don't want to post it here)

Answer 2

Try this:

alert(navigator.appName);

Answer 3

This is basic for browser type detection but from this littel code its difficult to understand what going wrong.... Can u add body of isBrowser() that will help.

Answer 4

I think jQuery got it right when they support testing for features instead of just browser.

Answer 5

A very good article on this comes from Quirksmode: http://www.quirksmode.org/js/support.html

The script supplied by 'lajuette' is good but it doesn't make you much smarter. The same author explain his thinking behind the script in the above link and basically what he says is:

• It is not about browser detection
• It is about object detection
• This leads to the knowledge of which browser is used.