Browser Name Sniffer

[cparker]

NOTE: This code has been updated.

I recently came across a need to sniff a user's browser name with JavaScript. I could just use navigator.appName, but many browsers report Netscape even when that's not really the case (e.g.: Firefox). I've seem some rather inelegant browser name scripts out there. So, I decided to write my own:

var browserName = navigator.appName;

if (browserName != "Microsoft Internet Explorer" || typeof document.all == "undefined")
{
if (browserName == "Microsoft Internet Explorer")
browserName = "your browser"; // for user agent switching capability
else if (browserName != "Netscape" || navigator.userAgent.indexOf("Netscape") != -1)
browserName = navigator.appName;
else
{
if ((/[ ]([\w]+?)[\/\s][\d\.]+?$/.test(navigator.userAgent))
|| (/[ ]([\w]+?)[\/\s][\d]+?[^;()]+?$/.test(navigator.userAgent))
|| (/^([\w]+)[\/\s][\d]+.+/.test(navigator.userAgent)))
browserName = RegExp.$1;
else
browserName = navigator.appName;
}
}

So far, this has worked most of the time during brief testing. One case where it didn't report the exact name is with Netscape 4.8, which is reported as Mozilla. I'm using Firefox's User Agent Switcher extension to do my testing, and the default Netscape entry that comes with User Agent Switcher is Netscape 4.8, which doesn't contain "Netscape" anywhere in navigator.userAgent.