Preserved Topic: CSS and Browser Detection...

With the advent of CSS2 and non-table design I was prompted to design two different templates. One template to be completely CSS2 complient. Using CSS for possitioning and the like. And another version that uses tables for the possitioning.

Now here comes the interesting part. Using PHP I would like to swap header and footer files depending upon the browser being used by the user.

This presents a problem for me. I am not sure which browsers are standard compliant. Anyone know?

IE5.5 & IE6, Mozilla/NS6, Opera5

Thanks max!

<? 

$agent = getenv("HTTP_USER_AGENT");



if (preg_match("/MSIE5.5/i", "$agent") &#0124; &#0124; preg_match("/MSIE6/i", "$agent") &#0124; &#0124; preg_match("/Mozilla/i", "$agent") &#0124; &#0124; preg_match("/NS6/i", "$agent")) 

{

  //Give CSS Template

}

else 

{

  //Give Tables Template

}

?>

So I could use this code to get the desired effect?

Nope, you should use this instead:

$standards = preg_match("/(MSIE5\\.5

Thats pretty slick!

If you are planning a standards compliant website then the Web Stanards web site will give you all the information on what browsers count as compliant:
http://www.webstandards.org

Basically what Mr.Max said should work unless you are attempting to do something more complex. This browser/platform detector:
http://www.phpbuilder.com/snippet/detail.php?type=snippet&id=8

, while pretty lengthy, could be adapted for your needs so you can target the correct versions platforms.

Emps

That code from PHPBuilder is very inefficient... Much simpler code that I wrote which does more or less the same job can be found here: http://www.ozoneasylum.com/Forum8/HTML/000183.html

http://www.webstandards.org/upgrade/

That is the page that supplies what browsers are supporting standards.

I would be appreciative if anyone had a link to a resourse of what is returned via getenv(HTTP_USER_AGENT)

There are many different browsers out there, and I would have no idea how to know what each HTTP_USER_AGENT would be for the different browsers.

The line of code that I wrote will correctly match all browsers listed on that page, with exception of MSIE5 for Mac, but it can be added very easy (simply search for words "MSIE5" and "Mac")

http://sourceforge.net/projects/phpsniff/

This is the most robust browser sniffer. It has functions to pull any bit of information you want about almost any browser. Might not be as efficient as Max's, but it will guarantee that you don't have to rewrite it later when you discover browser discrepencies.

BTW, IE5.5 still does not support the correct box model (which is important for CSS based layouts). There are also many other minor differences that can come into play, most notably for my site was the way lists handle their indentation/left margin in different browsers.

I actually load a main stylesheet, then have a number of if statements that load other stylesheets on top based on what particular browsers need modified.

-jiblet

Just a small suggestion - if you don't have a very complex web site, using complex libraries like phpSniff would be overkill for web server...

True dat. I guess not everyone is building sites on a dedicated server that serves <1000 pages a day

-jiblet

I'm bumping this up from way back when because I'm trying to see if I can detect the user's screen resolution info from a HTTP_USER_AGENT or some similar env. Can it be done?

I would love something as cool as:
$standards = preg_match("/(MSIE5\\.5

I'm pretty sure this can't be done.

Hopefully someone will tell you for sure but I don't think that info is sent in the general header info sent and recieved in the headers.

You could do somesort of trickiness on the client side though, like make a landing page that does the detect and then redirects the user to a page with the info encoded in the URL.





:[ Computers let you make more mistakes faster than any other invention in human history, with the possible exceptions of handguns and tequila. ]:

Screen resolution can only be determined on the client-side. It's not sent with HTTP headers...

Ok, thanks. I figured if anyone knew, you all would I'll just have to modify my plans just a bit but I think my page will still work out ok.

Max -

So, testing your line
<B>$standards = preg_match("/(MSIE5\\.5

Or better yet

<?php
$standard = preg_match("/(MSIE5\\.5

if (preg_match("/(MSIE5\\.5