Javascript - Browser detection

Yesterday, a user of my website notified me that she didn't see anything on the website. What? I checked, and found that she used IE v9 to access the website. My website works perfectly in the current Chrome, Firefox and IE10 (or newer).

There're two solutions I can think about to deal with this issue:

1. Detect the user's browser, if it is Internet Explorer and the version is older than 10, notify her and suggest to install a newer browser.

2. Add IE9 (or older) support for my website. And this will be so much pain.


I tried the solution number 1, so I did the following steps:

1. Dectect the user's browser and version using Peter-Paul Koch's script:

var BrowserDetect = {
 init: function () {
  this.browser = this.searchString(this.dataBrowser) || "An unknown browser";
  this.version = this.searchVersion(navigator.userAgent)
   || this.searchVersion(navigator.appVersion)
   || "an unknown version";
  this.OS = this.searchString(this.dataOS) || "an unknown OS";
 },
 searchString: function (data) {
  for (var i=0;i<data.length;i++) {
   var dataString = data[i].string;
   var dataProp = data[i].prop;
   this.versionSearchString = data[i].versionSearch || data[i].identity;
   if (dataString) {
    if (dataString.indexOf(data[i].subString) != -1)
     return data[i].identity;
   }
   else if (dataProp)
    return data[i].identity;
  }
 },
 searchVersion: function (dataString) {
  var index = dataString.indexOf(this.versionSearchString);
  if (index == -1) return;
  return parseFloat(dataString.substring(index+this.versionSearchString.length+1));
 },
 dataBrowser: [
  {
   string: navigator.userAgent,
   subString: "Chrome",
   identity: "Chrome"
  },
  {  string: navigator.userAgent,
   subString: "OmniWeb",
   versionSearch: "OmniWeb/",
   identity: "OmniWeb"
  },
  {
   string: navigator.vendor,
   subString: "Apple",
   identity: "Safari",
   versionSearch: "Version"
  },
  {
   prop: window.opera,
   identity: "Opera",
   versionSearch: "Version"
  },
  {
   string: navigator.vendor,
   subString: "iCab",
   identity: "iCab"
  },
  {
   string: navigator.vendor,
   subString: "KDE",
   identity: "Konqueror"
  },
  {
   string: navigator.userAgent,
   subString: "Firefox",
   identity: "Firefox"
  },
  {
   string: navigator.vendor,
   subString: "Camino",
   identity: "Camino"
  },
  {  // for newer Netscapes (6+)
   string: navigator.userAgent,
   subString: "Netscape",
   identity: "Netscape"
  },
  {
   string: navigator.userAgent,
   subString: "MSIE",
   identity: "Explorer",
   versionSearch: "MSIE"
  },
  {
   string: navigator.userAgent,
   subString: "Gecko",
   identity: "Mozilla",
   versionSearch: "rv"
  },
  {   // for older Netscapes (4-)
   string: navigator.userAgent,
   subString: "Mozilla",
   identity: "Netscape",
   versionSearch: "Mozilla"
  }
 ],
 dataOS : [
  {
   string: navigator.platform,
   subString: "Win",
   identity: "Windows"
  },
  {
   string: navigator.platform,
   subString: "Mac",
   identity: "Mac"
  },
  {
      string: navigator.userAgent,
      subString: "iPhone",
      identity: "iPhone/iPod"
     },
  {
   string: navigator.platform,
   subString: "Linux",
   identity: "Linux"
  }
 ]

};
BrowserDetect.init();

        var browser = BrowserDetect.browser;
        var version = BrowserDetect.version;


2. Check if it is IE and the version is older than 10, then redirect the user to warning view (I use Django here):

         if (browser=='Explorer' && version<10) {
                window.location.replace("{% url 'myDjangoApp.views.browserredirect' %}");
         }

References: for more understanding of the browser detect script, please read: http://www.quirksmode.org/js/detect.html