Browser Detection in JavaScript – Interesting Code
I was working on my web app today and my boss stopped by to say that it was probably a good idea to add in some kind of checking to see what browser is being used and only allow those that we know are stable - Google Chrome and Firefox 3. I was thinking that I'd have to do it in a JSP - take the entire page I'd had and make it a JSP and then do the checking there, but in reality, I can do it all in JavaScript.
I googled around and found this page where a pretty nice version of the browser detection is done. It's simple, fast, extensible, and works perfectly for my needs. Sure, I agree with the page and saying that this is not the best way to make a system cross-browser, but that's not what I'm after. I know which browsers are OK and which ones aren't. And it's got nothing to do with the capabilities - it's the stability of the JavaScript engine. So I really did want something as simple as letting me know the browser and version.
I put this into my code and then simply set the innerHTML value of a div that was to be the graph on the page to a simple paragraph explaining why we weren't able to show the data, and what they needed to do in order to see it. Basically, get Chrome and try again.
It's a pretty sweet little bit of code. Nice to have around.