Question

157

How to detect IE 11 with javascript in Asp.net

rated 0 times [ 158] [ 1] / answers: 1 / hits: 37363 / 11 Years ago, wed, september 18, 2013, 12:00:00

Hello I want to detect the Browser , IE 8 or more will be appropriate for me. For this i used following code but it fails for IE 11 . For other its detecting properly.

function getInternetExplorerVersion()

{

    var rv = -1; // Return value assumes failure.

    if (navigator.appName == 'Microsoft Internet Explorer') {

        var ua = navigator.userAgent;

        var re = new RegExp(MSIE ([0-9]{1,}[.0-9]{0,}));

        if (re.exec(ua) != null)

            rv = parseFloat(RegExp.$1);

    }

    return rv;

}

Below is the link which also I tried but couldn't succeed.

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hasanb

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4 Years ago

answered 11 Years ago debras · Accepted Answer

DO NOT DO BROWSER DETECTION! It will break, and it will cause you problems.

IE11 has a completely different User Agent string to previous IE versions; it not longer includes the MSIE text. This is why your detection code doesn't work.

It's important to note here that the reason they did this was deliberate. They wanted to break browser detection scripts like this.

It is possible to change your code to work with IE11, but I strongly recommend not doing this, as you'll probably have the same issue all over again when IE12 comes out.

So why did they want to break browser detection scripts? Simple: Because IE11 does not have the bugs of previous versions, and it has a lot of new features. So if you're doing browser detection because IE has certain bugs or missing features and you've got code to fix those issues based on the browser detect, then that code might actually cause worse problems in IE11 where the fixes aren't needed.

IE11 has broken your script, but the same logic applies to all browsers and all versions; detecting the browser and version is almost always the wrong thing to do.

If there are specific features that you want to support, but are missing in older IE versions (or other older browsers), don't use browser detection to work it out; you should use feature detection instead.

Feature detection means checking the browser to see whether it supports the particular features you want to use. The most common way of doing this is to use the Modernizr library. The docs on their site will guide you through setting it up.

There are a few bugs in older IE versions which are hard to detect, and for these few cases, it is valid to use browser detection as a last resort, but these cases are really only for IE6 and earlier. Maybe occasionally for IE7. But you've stated in the question that you're only looking at IE8 and later, so that should not apply.

Stick with feature detection; it's more reliable, better practice, and won't break suddenly when a new browser version is released.