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

function detectIE() {
    var ua = window.navigator.userAgent;
    var ie = ua.search(/(MSIE|Trident|Edge)/);

    return ie > -1;
}

Answer 2

Just adding onto Mario's extremely helpful answer.

If all you want to know is if the browser is IE or not, the code can be simplified down to just:

var ms_ie = false;
var ua = window.navigator.userAgent;
var old_ie = ua.indexOf('MSIE ');
var new_ie = ua.indexOf('Trident/');

if ((old_ie > -1) || (new_ie > -1)) {
    ms_ie = true;
}

if ( ms_ie ) {
    //IE specific code goes here
}

Update

I recommend this now. It is still very readable and is far less code :)

var ua = window.navigator.userAgent;
var is_ie = /MSIE|Trident/.test(ua);

if ( is_ie ) {
  //IE specific code goes here
}

Thanks to JohnnyFun in the comments for the shortened answer :)

Answer 3

Use below JavaScript method :

function msieversion() 
{
    var ua = window.navigator.userAgent;
    var msie = ua.indexOf("MSIE ");

    if (msie > 0) // If Internet Explorer, return version number
    {
        alert(parseInt(ua.substring(msie + 5, ua.indexOf(".", msie))));
    }
    else  // If another browser, return 0
    {
        alert('otherbrowser');
    }

    return false;
}

You may find the details on below Microsoft support site :

How to determine browser version from script

Update : (IE 11 support)

function msieversion() {

    var ua = window.navigator.userAgent;
    var msie = ua.indexOf("MSIE ");

    if (msie > 0 || !!navigator.userAgent.match(/Trident.*rv\:11\./))  // If Internet Explorer, return version number
    {
        alert(parseInt(ua.substring(msie + 5, ua.indexOf(".", msie))));
    }
    else  // If another browser, return 0
    {
        alert('otherbrowser');
    }

    return false;
}

Answer 4

This returns true for any version of Internet Explorer:

function isIE(userAgent) {
  userAgent = userAgent || navigator.userAgent;
  return userAgent.indexOf("MSIE ") > -1 || userAgent.indexOf("Trident/") > -1 || userAgent.indexOf("Edge/") > -1;
}

The userAgent parameter is optional and it defaults to the browser's user agent.

Answer 5

Below I found elegant way of doing this while googling ---

/ detect IE
var IEversion = detectIE();

if (IEversion !== false) {
  document.getElementById('result').innerHTML = 'IE ' + IEversion;
} else {
  document.getElementById('result').innerHTML = 'NOT IE';
}

// add details to debug result
document.getElementById('details').innerHTML = window.navigator.userAgent;

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

  // Test values; Uncomment to check result …

  // IE 10
  // ua = 'Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; MSIE 10.0; Windows NT 6.2; Trident/6.0)';

  // IE 11
  // ua = 'Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.3; Trident/7.0; rv:11.0) like Gecko';

  // IE 12 / Spartan
  // ua = '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';

  // Edge (IE 12+)
  // ua = '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';

  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;
}

Answer 6

Try doing like this

if ($.browser.msie && $.browser.version == 8) {
    //my stuff

}