Browser sniffing - all the rage.

[RobG]

Browser sniffing is generally considered a very bad idea, developers
are usually told that feature detection is the way to go. It seems a
real pitty then that the developers of new platforms are actually
encouraging browser sniffing by releasing "detection" scripts:

<URL: http://webkit.org/blog/119/webkit-detect-script-updated-for-iphone-and-ipod-touch/
Cest la vie.

 

[Stevo]

Browser sniffing is generally considered a very bad idea, developers
are usually told that feature detection is the way to go. It seems a
real pitty then that the developers of new platforms are actually
encouraging browser sniffing by releasing "detection" scripts:

I wouldn't say they were encouraging it. They said something about if
you can't detect the capabilities, then this is sometimes the only way.

On the plus side of what they're doing, at least they're detecting
Webkit which is somewhat less spoofed than IE. If you get a positive
detection against Webkit, then it's much more likely that what you've
found really is Webkit. Let's face it, who'd want to spoof their
userAgent to pretend to be the worst browser around ;-)

You can't say that so reliably when it's IE that you've found a match
for in the userAgent string. You might have found any browser pretending
to be IE.