[Catalyst] Checking client browsers, best approach?

Brian Cassidy brian.cassidy at nald.ca
Wed Sep 20 15:19:58 CEST 2006


Hi Ryan,

Ryan wrote:
> OK, here is what I need to do.  I'm writing a reservation system for a
> hotel and I have some cool features in mind for the process but they
> require javascript and "newer" browsers. What I was planning on doing is
> creating the bare-bones pages that work in any browser, no JS just all
> server calls etc...then I want to go back and insert the new stuff where
> it's appropriate but only for the people that can handle it.  I was
> thinking of having a landing page(default or something) that ran some
> tests to see if that could fail. Then I thought it might be easier in the
> begin function to just check browsers and set a variable in the stash if
> they can handle the new stuff or not. What's the best way to go about
> doing this, should I just scan the req variables that come in and make my
> decision on that or does Catalyst have something better?
>   
The "experts" have told us that browser sniffing is evil -- god kills a 
kitten, yadda, yadda. The preferred method to use is called "object 
detection" [1]. If you're using a pre-built ajax framework, check to see 
if it has some object detection built in.

-Brian

[1] http://www.quirksmode.org/js/support.html



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