Bowser

A Browser detector. Because sometimes, there is no other way, and not even good modern browsers always provide good feature detection mechanisms.

So... it works like this:

if (bowser.msie && bowser.version <= 6) {
  alert('Hello China');
}

Flags set for detected Browsers[Engines]

• chrome[webkit]
• firefox[gecko]
• msie
• Android native browser as android[webkit]
• iOS native browser as ios[webkit]
• opera[webkit if >12]
• phantomjs[webkit]
• safari[webkit]
• seamonkey[gecko]
• BlackBerry native browser as blackberry[webkit]
• WebOS native browser as webos[webkit]
• Amazon Kindle browser as silk[webkit]

For all detected browsers the browser version is set in the version field.

Flags set for detected mobile Operating Systems

• android
• Windows Phone as windowsphone
• ios (iphone/ipad/ipod)
• blackberry
• firefoxos
• webos

Android, iOS, Windows Phone, and WebOS will all report the OS version number if it is contained in the UA string in the osversion field. iOS is always reported as ios and additionally as iphone/ipad/ipod, whichever one matches best. If WebOS device is an HP TouchPad the flag touchpad is additionally set.

All detected mobile OSes are additionally flagged mobile.

Notes

Safari, Chrome and some other minor browsers will report that they have webkit engines, Firefox and Seamonkey will report that they have gecko engines.

if (bowser.webkit) {
  // do stuff with safari & chrome & opera & android & blackberry & webos & silk
}

Ender installation

If you don't already have Ender (an npm package) install it now (and don't look back)

$ npm install ender

then add bowser to your module collection

$ ender add bowser

use it like this:

if ($.browser.chrome) {
  alert('Hello Silicon Valley');
}

Graded Browser Support

One useful feature of Bowser is that aside from checking one browser from another -- it will keep up to date with Yahoo's Graded Browser Support chart, giving you access to each grade on the bowser object

if (bowser.a) {
  // support full feature set
}
else if (bowser.c) {
  // serve degraded version
}
else {
  // unsupported (bowser.x)
}

Building

If you'd like to contribute a change to bowser, modify the files in src/, then run the following (you'll need node + npm installed):

$ npm install
$ make

Testing

We started a list src/useragents.js with example user agents and their expected bowser object.

Whenever you add support for new browsers or notice a bug / mismatch, please update the list and check if all tests are still passing.

To run the test call $ make test