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How can I detect the Browser OS from Javascript?

Answer 1

+2 A:

The problem is that your parenthesis are wrong. Try this instead:

if ( navigator.appVersion.indexOf("Win")!=-1 
     && navigator.appVersion.indexOf("Mac")!=-1 
     && navigator.appVersion.indexOf("X11")!=-1 
     && navigator.appVersion.indexOf("Linux")!=-1 ){
       document.location.href= "http://website.web.org/mobile/index.html";
}
else{ 
       document.location.href = "http://website.web.org/Home.html"
}

klausbyskov 2010-10-24 14:13:09

Answer 2

+10 A:

What is wrong with this script?

Yeah, pretty much everything.

From the missing parentheses on the if statement, to the old-school language attribute, to the potentially-navigation-breaking JavaScript-redirect, to the whole idea of redirecting based on crude user-agent sniffing.

Your strategy will fail for Windows Mobile (contains “Windows CE”), Windows Phone, iPhone/iPad (contains the string “like Mac OS X”), and Android devices (contains “Linux”). That's a pretty good coverage of major mobile OSes to fail on, not to mention the desktop browsers that might not include any of those tokens.

You might be able to improve this by sniffing for particular cases you want to detect. See this list for an overview of what exists.

Treating all “mobile” devices as the same is unlikely to make sense when that category encompasses everything from barely-internet-capable featurephones to large-screen tablets. Modern mobile browsers are quite capable of rendering normal HTML pages, especially if you encourage accessibility by using liquid layout, and handheld-stylesheets to reduce necessary content width.

bobince 2010-10-24 14:43:03

Not to mention that relatively a lot of mobile browsers have JS disabled.

BalusC 2010-10-24 16:05:28

Indeed. At the very least, plain links should be included in the `<body>`. If you do have to go with a separate interface and sniffing (JS or otherwise), you will certainly need a manual method/link for the user to pick their interface manually, because any sniffing technique is going to fail a good proportion of the time.

bobince 2010-10-24 16:12:21

...or both: `<a href="http://microsoft.com/" onclick="showFancyPopup(); return false;">Get IE!</a>`

Christian Sciberras 2010-10-25 01:10:29

Answer 3

+2 A:

Don't use these redirections client-side, I advise you to take of the scripts here: http://detectmobilebrowser.com/

netadictos 2010-10-24 15:08:02

Yeah, while at it, start storing your password/user database here: [email protected]

Christian Sciberras 2010-10-25 01:20:34

Sorry, what is all this about?

netadictos 2010-10-25 06:54:47

Answer 4

+2 A:

I would use the "browser feature detect", which detects if the browser supports certain features. If it does not then redirect them to a compatible version of the web site. It is safer in the long run because it will allow the best version of the website to be used when browsers are update to include new features.

https://developer.mozilla.org/en/Browser_Feature_Detection

Eric 2010-10-24 22:08:13

Answer 5

+2 A:

The other comments are all valid, but I think the root of your problem is this:

if (navigator.appVersion.indexOf("Win")!=-1) && (navigator.appVersion.indexOf("Mac")!=-1) && (navigator.appVersion.indexOf("X11")!=-1) && (navigator.appVersion.indexOf("Linux")!=-1)

when reformatted is

if (navigator.appVersion.indexOf("Win")!=-1)
    && (navigator.appVersion.indexOf("Mac")!=-1)
    && (navigator.appVersion.indexOf("X11")!=-1)
    && (navigator.appVersion.indexOf("Linux")!=-1)

which is equivalent to

if (isWindows
    && isMac
    && isX11
    && isLinux)

(because indexOf("foo")!=-1 means "found foo").

Can you see the logic error here?

That's why you should follow the advice of the other answers: format your code so it's readable, and (where possible) use an existing library. Sensible use of CSS is also your friend.

Cameron Skinner 2010-10-24 22:16:36

Answer 6

+1 A:

This will show you how to use JavaScript for Browser Detection, its not that hard. It won't actually tell which OS but since it will know if its a browser on a phone or computer it will be useful in directing to a mobile site like you wanted.

http://www.javascriptkit.com/javatutors/navigator.shtml

Blake 2010-10-25 01:04:28

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How can I detect the Browser OS from Javascript?

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