Decaflon Thread: In-site Browser identification.

In-site Browser identification.

Oli — Fri, 27 Apr 2007 19:42:20

All websites on the internet should display correctly in A-grade browsers, as defined by Yahoo.

I think you have the wrong end of what they were saying there, mate. All that pages does is show what browsers support the YUI JS library well.

In-site Browser identification.

CK — Fri, 27 Apr 2007 19:37:15

I'm more than happy for anyone with a spare for hours (weeks?) to have a look through the code and advise/re-write the areas that would improve multi-browser support - partiuclarly with reference to IE6. I simply don't have the knowledge to do this.

In-site Browser identification.

peroty — Fri, 27 Apr 2007 19:31:21

I'm not saying browser detection is a good course of action to take. Just explaining how it was done. :)

I think we need to get Firefox, Internet Explorer, Safari, and Opera in one big room together and make them all kiss and make up!

In-site Browser identification.

Wolf — Fri, 27 Apr 2007 19:30:24

All websites on the internet should display correctly in A-grade browsers, as defined by Yahoo. At the moment of writing a huge percentage of users is still using Internet Explorer 6, thus you should make your site work correctly in IE6.

http://developer.yahoo.com/yui/articles/gbs/

In-site Browser identification.

CK — Fri, 27 Apr 2007 19:25:46

My concern is that they would think the disjointed design would be through poor coding (which it might be :-S) as opposed to a poor browser, though I fully appreciate where you're coming from with that.

I want to inform people of this fact as best I can, yet also allow them to carry on viewing the site regardless of their browser.

(I have no idea how to get it working in IE6, sadly. Though I know next to nothing about coding and have someone else writing it for me.)

In-site Browser identification.

Eleni — Fri, 27 Apr 2007 19:20:05

Now don't get me wrong I am a FF and I can understand popping up something like this if a user ran IE 5. But is it really time yet to be phasing out IE 6 from your site? I would assume most of the users that visit your site are technical and would be using FF, IE7, or Safari but there may be a few stumblers who use IE6 and get turned off.

I hate it when I get a message saying please view this site in IE, so I can imagine users using IE6 would also be annoyed (Even though you are doing them a favor). Whats a worse UX a few pixels being out of place or a big error message in your face.

In-site Browser identification.

peroty — Fri, 27 Apr 2007 18:27:01

If IE is detected, then a new stylesheet is added to the page:

And here is the code added when IE is detected.

Note: There's probably a lot more people who could explain this better but that's the basics.

In-site Browser identification.

CK — Fri, 27 Apr 2007 18:19:59

That sounds pretty darn neat. So you're saying that this chap managed to add some code that, when the site was being viewed through an IE browser, loaded up a totally seperate page?

That would be hugely useful for mine, given that it HATES IE completely.

A simple page advising the user to get FF or Opera, etc, and an option to 'continue at your own risk', would be pretty neat!

In-site Browser identification.

peroty — Fri, 27 Apr 2007 18:14:08

There's plenty you could do with browser sniffing and adding a small DIV to the top or something advising people to use a browser from this millennium.

There was a designer who used browser sniffing to server a completely grayscale page to IE, and every other browser got the real, colorful edition, though I've since forgotten who it was.

In-site Browser identification.

CK — Fri, 27 Apr 2007 18:08:11

A bit of an obsure title, but to give a working example of what I'm referring to, take a quick look at Shifting Pixel.

http://shiftingpixel.com

Browsing the site at work, using the outdated IE5 browser, there is a content area at the top advising me to use Firefox.

My current redesign merely has a pop up that advises the same thing, but I'm wondering if there was a way (ideally simple) to incorporate such a function; a person viewing my new site in IE will find a nice message added at the very top of the page as part of the website itself.

I hope that makes sense, I don't know how else to try and explain it!