Check if user is using IE with jQuery

Question

I am calling a function like the one below by click on divs with a certain class.

Is there a way I can check when starting the function if a user is using Internet Explorer and abort / cancel it if they are using other browsers so that it only runs for IE users ? The users here would all be on IE8 or higher versions so I would not need to cover IE7 and lower versions.

If I could tell which browser they are using that would be great but is not required.

Example function:

$('.myClass').on('click', function(event)
{
    // my function
});

Answer 1

@SpiderCode's solution does not work with IE 11. Here is the best solution that I used henceforth in my code where I need browser detection for particular feature.

IE11 no longer reports as MSIE, according to this list of changes, it's intentional to avoid mis-detection.

What you can do if you really want to know it's IE is to detect the Trident/ string in the user agent if navigator.appName returns Netscape, something like (the untested);

Thanks to this answer

function isIE()
{
  var rv = -1;
  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 );
  }
  else if (navigator.appName == 'Netscape')
  {
    var ua = navigator.userAgent;
    var re  = new RegExp("Trident/.*rv:([0-9]{1,}[\.0-9]{0,})");
    if (re.exec(ua) != null)
      rv = parseFloat( RegExp.$1 );
  }
  return rv == -1 ? false: true;
}

Answer 2

You can use $.browser to get name, vendor and version information.

See http://api.jquery.com/jQuery.browser/

Answer 3

This is how the Angularjs team is doing it (v 1.6.5):

var msie, // holds major version number for IE, or NaN if UA is not IE.

// Support: IE 9-11 only
/**
 * documentMode is an IE-only property
 * http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ie/cc196988(v=vs.85).aspx
 */
msie = window.document.documentMode;

Then there are several lines of code scattered throughout using it as a number such as

if (event === 'input' && msie <= 11) return false;

and

if (enabled && msie < 8) {

Answer 4

As of Internet Explorer 12+ (aka Edge), the User Agent String has changed, once again.

/**
 * detect IE
 * returns version of IE or false, if browser is not Internet Explorer
 */
function detectIE() {
    var ua = window.navigator.userAgent;

    var msie = ua.indexOf('MSIE ');
    if (msie > 0) {
        // IE 10 or older => return version number
        return parseInt(ua.substring(msie + 5, ua.indexOf('.', msie)), 10);
    }

    var trident = ua.indexOf('Trident/');
    if (trident > 0) {
        // IE 11 => return version number
        var rv = ua.indexOf('rv:');
        return parseInt(ua.substring(rv + 3, ua.indexOf('.', rv)), 10);
    }

    var edge = ua.indexOf('Edge/');
    if (edge > 0) {
       // Edge (IE 12+) => return version number
       return parseInt(ua.substring(edge + 5, ua.indexOf('.', edge)), 10);
    }

    // other browser
    return false;
}

Sample usage:

alert('IE ' + detectIE());

Default string of IE 10:

Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; MSIE 10.0; Windows NT 6.2; Trident/6.0)

Default string of IE 11:

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.3; Trident/7.0; rv:11.0) like Gecko 

Default string of IE 12 (aka Edge):

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; WOW64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/39.0.2171.71 Safari/537.36 Edge/12.0 

Default string of Edge 13 (thx @DrCord):

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/46.0.2486.0 Safari/537.36 Edge/13.10586 

Default string of Edge 14:

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/46.0.2486.0 Safari/537.36 Edge/14.14300 

Default string of Edge 15:

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/52.0.2743.116 Safari/537.36 Edge/15.15063 

Default string of Edge 16:

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/58.0.3029.110 Safari/537.36 Edge/16.16299 

Default string of Edge 17:

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/64.0.3282.140 Safari/537.36 Edge/17.17134 

Default string of Edge 18 (Insider preview):

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; ServiceUI 14) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/64.0.3282.140 Safari/537.36 Edge/18.17730 

Test at CodePen:

http://codepen.io/gapcode/pen/vEJNZN

Answer 5

This only work below IE 11 version.

var ie_version = parseInt(window.navigator.userAgent.substring(window.navigator.userAgent.indexOf("MSIE ") + 5, window.navigator.userAgent.indexOf(".", window.navigator.userAgent.indexOf("MSIE "))));

console.log("version number",ie_version);

Answer 6

Using modernizr

Modernizr.addTest('ie', function () {
    var ua = window.navigator.userAgent;
    var msie = ua.indexOf('MSIE ') > 0;
    var ie11 = ua.indexOf('Trident/') > 0;
    var ie12 = ua.indexOf('Edge/') > 0;
    return msie || ie11 || ie12;
});