Client Services

Client Aids

Client-Side Browser Capabilities

At one time Browser Sniffing was a necessary evil needed to accommodate browser differences. As more browser manufacturers embraced standards this need has diminished, hopefully forever...

This page remains solely to support existing customers; the original script file can be downloaded from BCaps source code.

We encourage everyone to begin using Web Standards in all new projects.

BCaps is a Client-Side Browser Capabilities detection script available on all Zenica Hosted Sites. It is based on the detection technology developed by Cyscape and distributed with the .NET Framework but modified for inclusion as a client-side script for use on sites that are not .NET enabled. Note: it will not work on browsers that have Scripting Disabled, so you will have to code accordingly.

Implementation

Cut and paste the following into the head region of your page. (Between the <head> and </head> tags)

NOTE: This is specific to Zenica Hosted Sites. If you want to 'Borrow' this code you will need to download the BCaps.js file and change the reference to suit.

How to Use

Implement a call to the function BCaps() wherever you need to determine a browser capability. BCaps only tests the browser capabilities on the first call, all subsequent calls return the original object, which improves efficiency.

E.g.

	if (BCaps().type == "IE6")
	{
		if (BCaps().crawler == true)
		{
			// do stuff for crawler
		}
		else
		{
			// do other stuff
		}
	}

BCaps does NOT return actual browser settings - only the browser capabilities. I.e. the browser may be CAPABLE of handling cookies, but cookies may ACTUALLY be disabled, in which case BCaps would still indicate true. For true client detection see BrowserHawk from Cyscape.

Documentation

The following parameters are available :-

Parameter Type Additional Comments
ak bool  
aol bool  
authenticodeupdate bool  
activexcontrols bool  
browser string "IE"
"PIE"
"WebTv"
"Opera"
"Netscape"
"PowerBrowser"
version string eg "4.5"
majorversion string eg "4"
minorversion string eg ".0"
frames bool  
tables bool  
cookies bool Capable - may be disabled by options
backgroundsounds bool  
vbscript bool  
javascript bool  
javaapplets bool  
win16 bool Windows 3.1 etc
win32 bool Windows 98 et al.
beta bool  
sk bool  
crawler bool BCaps defaults to true, BrowserCaps defaults to false.
cdf bool  
gold bool  
tagwriter string "HtmlTextWriter"
"Html32TextWriter"
ecmascriptversion string eg "1.0"
msdomversion string eg "1.0"
platform string "Win95"
"Win98"
"WinXP"
"Win2000"
"WinNT"
"Win16"
"WinCE"
"Mac68K"
"MacPPC"
"UNIX"
"WebTV"
clrversion string  
css1 bool  
css2 bool  
xml bool  
type string Combine browser and majorversion i.e. IE4

We are not affiliated with Cyscape, and Cyscape do not endorse our product. Please visit Cyscape at www.cyscape.com for the ultimate browser detector. 
This program is offered "as is" without any warranty, guarantee or support. Use at your own risk.

How and Why

Browsers are different. It's as simple as that. Even browser editions are different, IE4, IE5 and IE6 all behave slightly differently from each other.

As web developers we'd like to place our page on a server and have everyone view it identically.

It just doesn't happen.

So what can we do? There are a number of ways to handle this situation :-

1) Ignore it - it will go away by itself. This has many merits, it's certainly easy to implement, and as more and more browsers begin to adhere to DOM standards, it has a surprising chance of coming true. In the mean time .....

2) Aim for commonality. Use just the basic common standards and avoid all the flashy extras available on some versions. Unfortunately it can be hard to find just what is basic and what is extra. Even CSS used to be an enhancement to some browsers, and should we use CSS1 or CSS2? Add to that, different makers implement the standards fractionally uniquely. What a mess .....

3) Detect the browser version and code specifically to suit. The problem here is how to keep abreast of all the changes - are you an expert on browser detection?

Cyscape is one of the leaders in capability detection - check out BrowserHawk at www.cyscape.com. They are the providers of BrowserCaps the in-built detection scheme provided by the .NET framework.

Unfortunately, if you don't have your own server it's going to be hard to take advantage of. 

Enter BCaps

BCaps is a detection routine based on BrowserCaps, but provided as a client-side feature of all Zenica servers.

Install it within your page and let us worry about keeping it current. See details (left) for complete documentation.