Comments on: Detecting IE in 12 bytes

By: Aleko

Aleko — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 03:28:53 +0000

better decision from me:

!-[1,]

returns true in IE and false in all others

or even

-[1,]

returns NaN in IE and -1 in all other browsers

By: Gareth Heyes

Gareth Heyes — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 09:41:40 +0000

@rvdh

Yes initially I had the same thoughts but when you think of it in the context of a js library your detection has to be independent of the web site code. E.g. this returns true in Firefox:-

onhelp=function() {
alert(‘Some web site code’);
}
if(onhelp) {
alert(‘Huh this is FF’);
}

By: rvdh

rvdh — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 09:29:15 +0000

onhelp is part of the window property: this.onhelp, therefore you can check if it’s null (which it should be) if it’s set and true, you still know it’s IE cuz the others will fail this property, And of course, “IE” can be overridden as well.

By: Gareth Heyes

Gareth Heyes — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 08:25:29 +0000

@rvdh

Yeah but the problem is that onhelp can be defined by a web site. So if a js library wanted to detect which browser it could be wrong.

@MJ

Because this was fun I’m gonna start a new post with some browser detecting hacks

By: rvdh

rvdh — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 08:08:54 +0000

Or, if you allow a null value as IE proof:

I=onhelp

By: rvdh

rvdh — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 08:00:07 +0000

Easy to beat:

I=screenTop

By: MJ

MJ — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 06:39:18 +0000

Love it! Now how can we detect IE6 with another dozen bytes or less?

By: Cd-MaN

Cd-MaN — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 05:42:39 +0000

Very cool! You can also abbreviate it to:

E=’\v’==’v’

Where E is for explorer

By: LightOS

LightOS — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 19:34:12 +0000

Never fail to impress me Gareth. Wish I had your JS skills.

By: dblackshell

dblackshell — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 16:43:45 +0000

detecting everything else…

FF=’\v’<’v’

actually tested it only in firefox