Comments on: PHP Browser Detection

By: Paul Currah

Paul Currah — Thu, 19 May 2011 11:15:18 +0000

I have to say, I struggled with this (I am a bit of a PHP noob tho)

BUT, I got it working really well, inspired by this post http://www.nathanrice.net/blog/browser-detection-and-the-body_class-function/

The problem with that PHP browser detection is that it doesn’t detect the version of the browser (very important for IE )

I wanted to share what I did with this plugin in simple terms (for other noobs out there):

1) obviously install and activate the PHP detection plugin in wordpress
2) In your theme header.php file, make sure the body tag has the class hook :

3) In your theme functions.php – add this code:

// PHP browser detection – adds browser to body class
add_filter(‘body_class’,'browser_class’);
function browser_class($classes) {
$browserInfo=php_browser_info();
$classes[] = $browser = $browserInfo[browser].$version = $browserInfo[version];
// return the $classes array
return $classes;
}

This adds the browser and version to the body’s class like so (at the end after all the WordPress body classes) :

body class =”home page page-id-2 page-template page-template-startpage-php logged-in Firefox3.6″

This is superb as you can distinguish between different browser versions through CSS alone (without any further PHP – which is great for me : )

You could also add the platform as stated above as well, but I thought I’d keep it simple

Hope this helps someone out

Paul

By: marty

marty — Sun, 15 May 2011 02:57:33 +0000

That would be a nice addition. If you get anything, let me know and I’ll add it. Thanks!

By: David

David — Sun, 15 May 2011 02:52:22 +0000

Excellent, thank you!

I’ll eventually get around to a screen resolution detection as I feel like that plays a large role, for my site anyway. But I’m not terribly adept so my code would probably be pretty ugly. If you got inspired, it’s an idea. If not, I’ll send you the code when I get around to it.

Thanks!

By: Kevin Haughwout

Kevin Haughwout — Mon, 02 May 2011 19:57:03 +0000

I was able to get detectin for Firefox 4 working through an easier and PHP-free solution. The Browser Capabilities Project has a newer version of the “lite_php_browscap.ini” up at the site whose link you posted. I replaced the “php_browser_detection_browscap.ini” in my plug-ins directory under WP with this new file, and now the “is_Firefox()” recognizes Firefox 4.

By: saffron

saffron — Wed, 30 Mar 2011 10:39:24 +0000

thanks for the quick reply.
I managed to solve the problem by using some of the php found on: http://us2.php.net/get_browser

probably not the most elegant way, but I only need a distiction of firefox yes or no … and…. i could manage the coding

By: marty

marty — Tue, 29 Mar 2011 01:54:45 +0000

Yeah, I had the same thing when Safari 4 came out. Suddenly Safari was not recognized.

I have been relying on a file that detects the browser info from : http://browsers.garykeith.com/downloads.asp

Problem is it doesn’t seem to be able to recognize the next versions. I might have to revisit how I detect the browsers at some point.

In the meantime, I’ll have to update that file. If you are good with PHP, you coud get that new file and find a way to fix the is_firefox function. Otherwise, I will get to it and update the plugin at some point.

By: saffron

saffron — Mon, 28 Mar 2011 07:51:01 +0000

hi marty,
thanx for the plugin. worked like a charm until i tried it on firefox 4 (on a Mac). Whereas firefox 3 was detected fine, 4 seems to be returning no information.

I am using

$browserInfo=php_browser_info();
$browser = $browserInfo[browser];
echo “browser used: $browser”;

which display “safari” in safari and “firefox” in firefox 3… but echos nothing at all in firefox 4.

I tried
echo $_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'] . “\n\n”;
$browser = get_browser(null, true);
print_r($browser);

which does show:
Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.5; rv:2.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/4.0 Array

any ideas?

By: marty

marty — Wed, 15 Dec 2010 20:51:11 +0000

Not just now, sorry. Targeting Chrome isn’t a priority for me as it seems to behave pretty well. I really made this as a convenient way to find the troublesome browsers.
I probably won’t revisit this plugin until maybe February at the earliest.

By: Woody

Woody — Wed, 15 Dec 2010 19:35:55 +0000

I have tried working around it a few times, but without success. Any ideas?

By: Woody

Woody — Sat, 11 Dec 2010 16:51:37 +0000

This is in Chrome 8.0.552.215