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How to detect IE7 with jQuery possibly using jQuery.browser?

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  • 6
    Browser detection=code smell Commented Jul 2, 2010 at 12:14
  • 1
    Counter-question: what do you need to differently in IE7? Commented Jul 2, 2010 at 12:16
  • 3
    @Marcel if you're checking the browser in order to make a page layout or behavior work better, it's OK of a spoofed user agent string defeats the code. It's also OK if a user uses Firebug to edit a page and make all the buttons stop working; it's clearly something they're doing just to entertain themselves :-) Commented Jul 2, 2010 at 12:27
  • @Pointy – Haha, yeah, you're right about that. :) Commented Jul 2, 2010 at 12:45
  • 7
    @spender Welcome to the real world. Commented Feb 6, 2013 at 15:19

3 Answers 3

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70

Got a method 

if ($.browser.msie  && parseInt($.browser.version, 10) === 7) {
  alert('IE7'); 
} else {
  alert('Non IE7');
}

-- update

Please note that $.browser is removed from jQuery 1.9

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4 Comments

See $.browser in the documentation: "Contains flags for the useragent, read from navigator.userAgent. We recommend against using this property; please try to use feature detection instead (see jQuery.support). jQuery.browser may be moved to a plugin in a future release of jQuery."
$.browser: Ever since jQuery 1.4, we’ve been evangelizing that browser detection via the user agent string is a bad idea. Yet we’ve been an enabler of bad practice by continuing to offer $.browser. As of jQuery 1.9 we’ll remove it entirely and you’ll need to use the 1.9 compat plugin.
This has now been removed from jQuery 1.9 - see alternative below.
In developer tools of IE, if the document mode is selected as 7 for compatibility check, your code would not catch that, to fix it you can add document.documentmode in your if statement. if ($.browser.msie && (parseInt($.browser.version, 10) == 7 || document.documentMode == 7))
52

See $.browser. This feature has been deprecated and you should consider $.support instead.

To answer the question, this is a rock solid technique primarily for use in stylesheets but can also be used easily to check browser version, or best still part of a selector.

  1. Use the following markup (from HTML5 Boilerplate)

    <!--[if lt IE 7]><html class="ie6"><![endif]-->
<!--[if IE 7]><html class="ie7"><![endif]-->
<!--[if IE 8]><html class="ie8"><![endif]-->
<!--[if gt IE 8]><!--><html><!--<![endif]-->
<head>

  2. Use a selector with hasClass in jQuery

    $('html').hasClass('ie7');
$('html.ie7 .myclass').dostuff();

  3. And use as part of a normal selector in css

    .mydiv {max-height:50px}
.ie6 .mydiv {height:50px} /* ie6 max-height fix */
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6 Comments

@Marcel there are some broken behaviors for which feature detection is really hard to implement. Mostly those are layout bugs. Another example is the problem IE has with varying opacity of images that themselves are PNG images with an alpha channel. How in the world would you "feature detect" that problem?
@Pointy – Ah, yes, of course, and the hovering problem in IE 6, and… That said, I would use conditional comments to include different chunks of JavaScript code. That's way more reliable than testing the User Agent string.
When you're doing code snippets in lists with markdown, code needs to go an extra four spaces to the right :)
@Pointy - simples - you place an alpha png over a red square, then you popup a window and ask the user if they see red. If they dont, you have an alpha problem ;)
@JamesWestgate Or they have a Red-Green color blindness problem... effects 5-10% of users ;)
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8

All other things considered:

if ($.browser.msie && $.browser.version == 7) {

    //do something

    };

Should work. Whether or not it is the right way to go about things is another question.

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1 Comment

This has now been removed from jQuery 1.9

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