Graphic Euphoria

Detect Internet Explorer 6 (IE6) and other popular browsers with Mootools

One of the top keyword searches on this blog is ‘detect ie6 mootools‘; As popular as this search term is, it’s not actually covered, so this post should fill that gap! Mootools is a great, stable, open source javascript library which is maintained by a limited number of proffesional developers. It does have a browser detection class built in but it doesn’t natively provide a method to detect the version of Internet Explorer. The Mootools developers are code purists; Extending their browser class would be easy but they do not want to do it. They do provide a method to get the browser build and this could be used along with the remaining browser string to work out the version. Essentially, they like to keep their code relevant and streamlined. In a previous post i covered how to detect IE6 with one line of Javascript. This solves the problem where later builds of IE6 can show a browser string similar to IE7. This can be combined with the Mootools browser class to produce browser variables.

//declare global variables
var WEBKIT = Browser.Engine.webkit;
var GECKO = Browser.Engine.gecko;
var OPERA = Browser.Engine.presto;
var IE = Browser.Engine.trident;
var IE6 = (navigator.userAgent.toLowerCase().indexOf('msie 6') != -1)
&& (navigator.userAgent.toLowerCase().indexOf('msie 7') == -1);

//test variables (delete)
if(WEBKIT) alert("WEBKIT");
if(GECKO) alert("GECKO");
if(OPERA) alert("OPERA");
if(IE) alert("IE");
if(IE6) alert("IE6");

Placing this code at the top of your JavaScript include will give you simple global boolean variables for each browser platform. Creating one variable per browser at the very start means the calls to the browser class are limited to one and the detection script is ran only once. It also means you have very simple and easy to remember variables to use throughout your code. Tags: browsers, ie, mootools

Save IE6 – if only Internet Explorer 6 was as good as this site

Just like every other web designer i can’t wait for Internet Explorer 6 to be gone. There are some people who do not share this view. Maybe IE6 does have some good points. Just maybe it might be worth saving… visit Save IE6 Ha! Tongue is definately in cheek. Forget about IE6 for a second and you are looking at a nice site, it even works perfectly in IE6. Check out the download link where you are forced to complete a compatibility test first and then sign the petition. I’d like to think the writing is on the wall for IE6 and that it won’t be around for much longer. In that case it really does need your help. Let’s hope it’s too late! Tags: browsers, ie

Google Analyitics – fix the ‘_gat’ is undefined problem in IE6 with Mootools

Google Analytics is a fantastic, totally free, web tracking service provided by Google. It works by embedding a Javascript include at the bottom of your page which loads Google’s tracking code. The code then passes all your tracking information to the Analytics cloud where it is digested and returned in the web-app.

The Problem

The code has to be included just before your closing body tag, this is because Google doesn’t want to hold up your page loading while it crunches this data, by placing it there it guarantees 99% of your page has finished loading. This works perfectly in almost all cases but there have been exceptions. The only time i have come across a problem was when i was testing a site on Internet Explorer 6. I kept receiving this error:

'_gat' is undefined

This can only be created when the code tries to call the Analytics code before it is launched. Basically, it’s is trying to call the function _gat too soon. Google have tried to fix this by adding a Javascript ‘try’ function.

<script type="text/javascript">
	var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www.");
	document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E"));
</script>
<script type="text/javascript">
	try {
		var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UX-XXXXXX-X");
		pageTracker._trackPageview();
	} catch(err) {}
</script>

This helps as the code ‘tries’ to run the function and if it can’t then it runs the catch command. This works because it doesn’t create any other errors and the site will continue operating normally. The only problem is no tracking information will be passed.

Fixing it with Mootools

Firstly, more and more websites are using Javascript to provide better interactivity and functionality so there is a good chance you are already using a library in your site. Secondly they provide core functions which can detect when the page’s DOM is ready and when the page itself has actually finished loading. There a couple of things that can improved by converting this code to use a popular Javascript framework such as Mootools. Page load speed should be improved as we try to insert the tracking code after the page has completely finished loading and has been initiated. As a result we can also hope to improve the code performance by making sure the code has been downloaded before trying to run it. Using Mootools we simply add a new Javascript assets into the page using the ‘addEvent’ function and then run the analyitics function calls when it has loaded.

window.addEvent('load', function() {
	var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www.");
	new Asset.javascript(gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js", {
		onload: function() {
			try {
			var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UX-XXXXXX-X");
			pageTracker._trackPageview();
			} catch(err) {}
		}
	});
});

As you can see, I have left the try function in, this is to protect against the same problem we faced initially. Only this time the chance of it happening has greatly reduced. Another benefit of using this method is that you can remove the tracking code from your HTML template or masterpage. Now it is simply added into your Javascript include instead. If you use analytics to track your AJAX calls then it helps that all your code is in the same place! I hope you find this useful, please leave a comment if you know of any improvements or think you know a better method. Tags: analytics, google, ie, mootools

Detect ALL versions of internet explorer 6 with one line of javascript!

One of the projects i am currently working on required me to determine if the user’s browser was Internet Explorer 6 or not. The website’s menu came slightly out of alignment by a few pixels. I would normally use a conditional statement to add extra CSS but since this was a javascript menu my choice was limited to one.. ..change the variable by a couple of pixels! After some quick googling i found a way of doing it by using the user-agent string. The Future of the Web » Detect Internet Explorer 6 in JavaScript This seemed perfect until i read the comments and stumbled across something. I was already aware that there are several different versions of IE6 and IE7 in existance but i didn’t know that some IE7′s return ‘msie 6‘ as it’s user string. An oversight by Microsoft perhaps? Thankfully the user who pointed this out also offered a solution. Kudos to James King (comment number 8)!

var IE6 = (navigator.userAgent.toLowerCase().indexOf('msie 6') != -1)
 && (navigator.userAgent.toLowerCase().indexOf('msie 7') == -1)

Tags: browsers, ie

Is IE6 dead? – how much longer do we have to wait!

It’s a question on every modern, dynamic, aware and forward thinking web designers mind.. Is IE6 dead? – yet? This site is cool, i have no idea who made it or how they calculate the date, but i hope they are wrong! Get IE6 out now! Tags: browsers, ie