var returns Description
ie 0 Internet Explorer 4+ and IE-based third-party browsers. You can also be more specific:
ie4 0 ... Internet Explorer 4 only.
ie5 0 ... Internet Explorer 5 or 6.
ie6 0 ... Internet Explorer 6 only.
ns4 0 Netscape 4
ns6 1 Gecko and KDE-based browsers - which includes Netscape 6 and 7, Mozilla, Konqueror and Safari. You can also identify smaller groups within this:
ns7 0 ... Netscape 7.
mz7 1 ... any gecko browser except Netscape. This is principally designed to identify Mozilla's own builds from Version 0.6 onwards, but it also returns true for any other non-netscape gecko browser.
kde 0 ... Konqueror, from KDE 2.2 onwards.
saf 0 ... Safari. This variable will identify Safari irrespective of which browser it's set to identify as.
op5 0 Opera 5
op6 0 Opera 6
op7 0 Opera 7
These variables will identify Opera irrespective of which browser it's set to identify as.
Underpinning these is a safety variable, for protecting legacy browsers:
exclude 0
There are also three OS variables:
win 1 Windows
mac 0 Mac OS
lin 0 Linux, or anything else
and you can query a lower-case version of the user agent string:
agt mozilla/5.0 (windows; u; windows nt 5.1; en-gb; rv:1.7.8) gecko/20050511 firefox/1.0.4
The sniffer variables are global, and therefore available to any other scripts on the same page. They allow you to code for or exclude specific browsers, eg:
if (mac&&ie5) { ... internet explorer 5 on a mac ... }
if (!ns4) { ... not netscape 4 ... }
if (win&&(op5||op6)) { ... a windows version of opera 5 or 6 ... }
if (ie5||ns6||op7) { ... ie5+, gecko, kde or opera 7 ... }
Remember that some browsers return true for more than one variable:
* Explorer 6 returns true for (ie6) and also for (ie)
* Explorer 5 or 6 return true for (ie5) and also for (ie)
* Explorer 4 returns true for (ie4) and also for (ie)
* Konqueror returns true for (kde) and also for (ns6)
* Safari returns true for (saf) and also for (ns6)
* All Gecko-based browsers which aren't Netscape return true for (mz7) and also for (ns6)
The exclude variable returns true for all unspecified browsers. This is very useful for protecting them from scary DHTML, eg:
if (!exclude) { ... modern browsers only ... }
You may find it necessary to use a combination of expressions to get to the browser you need, eg:
if (!exclude) {
if (ns6||op7) { ... gecko, KTHML or Opera 7 ... }
else if (ie5) { ... internet explorer 5+ ... }
else { ... any other dhtml browser ... }
}
There are several minor browsers which have enough DHTML support to pass one of the object tests, but not enough to be useful. The script specifically filters out (adds to the exclude group) - Espial Escape, ICEBrowser and OmniWeb.
