jQuery.browser

The $.browser property provides information about the web browser that is accessing the page, as reported by the browser itself. It contains flags for each of the four most prevalent browser classes (Internet Explorer, Mozilla, Webkit, and Opera) as well as version information.

Available flags are:

• webkit (as of jQuery 1.4)
• safari (deprecated)
• opera
• msie
• mozilla

This property is available immediately. It is therefore safe to use it to determine whether or not to call $(document).ready(). The $.browser property is deprecated in jQuery 1.3, and its functionality may be moved to a team-supported plugin in a future release of jQuery.

Because $.browser uses navigator.userAgent to determine the platform, it is vulnerable to spoofing by the user or misrepresentation by the browser itself. It is always best to avoid browser-specific code entirely where possible. Instead of relying on $.browser it's better to use libraries like Modernizr.

Show the browser info.

jQuery.each( jQuery.browser, function( i, val ) {
  $( "<div>" + i + " : <span>" + val + "</span>" )
  .appendTo( document.body );
});

Return true if the current useragent is some version of Microsoft's Internet Explorer. Will not work in jQuery 1.9 or later unless the jQuery Migrate plugin is included.

$.browser.msie;

Alert "this is WebKit!" only for WebKit browsers. Will not work in jQuery 1.9 or later unless the jQuery Migrate plugin is included.

  if ( $.browser.webkit ) {
    alert( "This is WebKit!" );
  }

Here are some typical results:

• Internet Explorer: 6.0, 7.0, 8.0
• Mozilla/Firefox/Flock/Camino: 1.7.12, 1.8.1.3, 1.9
• Opera: 10.06, 11.01
• Safari/Webkit: 312.8, 418.9

Note that IE8 claims to be 7 in Compatibility View.

Return the version number of the rendering engine used by the user's current browser. For example, FireFox 4 returns 2.0 (the version of the Gecko rendering engine it utilizes). Will not work in jQuery 1.9 or later unless the jQuery Migrate plugin is included.

$( "p" ).html( "The version # of the browser's rendering engine is: <span>" +
  $.browser.version + "</span>" );

Alert the version of IE's rendering engine that is being used. Will not work in jQuery 1.9 or later unless the jQuery Migrate plugin is included.

if ( $.browser.msie ) {
  alert( $.browser.version );
}