Comments on: When Browser Detection Isn’t a Bad Thing http://arapehlivanian.com/when-browser-detection-isnt-a-bad-thing/ Web Standards, Web Culture, Web Everything.™ Sun, 25 Sep 2011 04:23:30 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 By: Ara Pehlivanian http://arapehlivanian.com/when-browser-detection-isnt-a-bad-thing/comment-page-1/#comment-39877 Ara Pehlivanian Tue, 15 Apr 2008 11:56:35 +0000 http://arapehlivanian.com/?p=372#comment-39877 @Stanley: Good question, in the case of Safari, and the example that I based my post on, I just overrode the behaviour outright. So no matter the browser, I based myself on my own generated index value instead of cellIndex. Otherwise, you're right, a simple if/else workaround for a target browser is sometimes the best we can do. @Stanley: Good question, in the case of Safari, and the example that I based my post on, I just overrode the behaviour outright. So no matter the browser, I based myself on my own generated index value instead of cellIndex. Otherwise, you’re right, a simple if/else workaround for a target browser is sometimes the best we can do.

]]> By: Stanley http://arapehlivanian.com/when-browser-detection-isnt-a-bad-thing/comment-page-1/#comment-39638 Stanley Thu, 10 Apr 2008 07:08:49 +0000 http://arapehlivanian.com/?p=372#comment-39638 I agree with your synopsis that browser detection is evil, but what do you do with your example in safari? if you get "knee deep" in code then determine that in safari it can't handle the method, how do you bail out nicely? I prefer to do browser detection, including versioning, and apply tweaks as possible for each browser, AND thus be able to If / Else wrap my other method calls to avoid known bugs. e.g. if(isSafari && isSafari3){ //workaround bug X } else { //process normally } This allows me to handle new versions of Safari, presuming that things are fixed. If they don't get fixed, I just tweak my JS to handle it. I got into this habit after reading Web Bug Track, which nicely highlights the most painful JS bugs in each browser. e.g. http://webbugtrack.blogspot.com/2007/08/bug-152-getelementbyid-returns.html Which, like your example works around IE and OPERA bugs with getElementById. Thanks, stanley I agree with your synopsis that browser detection is evil, but what do you do with your example in safari?

if you get “knee deep” in code then determine that in safari it can’t handle the method, how do you bail out nicely?

I prefer to do browser detection, including versioning, and apply tweaks as possible for each browser, AND thus be able to If / Else wrap my other method calls to avoid known bugs.

e.g.
if(isSafari && isSafari3){
//workaround bug X
} else {
//process normally

}

This allows me to handle new versions of Safari, presuming that things are fixed. If they don’t get fixed, I just tweak my JS to handle it.

I got into this habit after reading Web Bug Track, which nicely highlights the most painful JS bugs in each browser.

e.g.
http://webbugtrack.blogspot.com/2007/08/bug-152-getelementbyid-returns.html

Which, like your example works around IE and OPERA bugs with getElementById.

Thanks, stanley

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