How To Detect Internet Explorer Version With PHP
Awhile ago I needed to detect the Internet Explorer version of the visitor from inside of my PHP script. Being lazy I just tried to Google for some existing code, but to my surprise there was none available! Well, I think it’s time to rectify that problem by publishing the code I ended up creating. The ieversion() function looks at the HTTP_USER_AGENT header sent by the browser to determine if the visitor is using Internet Explorer. If not, then the script will return -1. If yes, then the script will extract the version number and return that.
function ieversion() { ereg('MSIE ([0-9]\.[0-9])',$_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'],$reg); if(!isset($reg[1])) { return -1; } else { return floatval($reg[1]); } }
What are the uses for this? You can do what I do and display a message notifying the visitor that he is using an outdated browser and he should upgrade to Firefox by clicking the Google Referal ad below. That solves two problems: Helps to pay the bills and I don’t have to make sure my site renders properly on the ancient Internet Explorer 6 (I let IE7 users get by, it does a pretty good job). I will publish the simple code I use for this later on.
You wrote Exporer instead of Explorer in the title
Exactly what I needed! Thank you!!!
Greetings from Switzerland
thanks
works fine 
Thanks a lot dude!
Thanks.
thanks, it helped me a lot!
Saved me time thanks for sharing! I’m surprised there isn’t already a function for this.
works like a charm. thank you!!!
Hi,
I added something extra.
function ieversion() {
ereg(‘MSIE ([0-9]\.[0-9])’,$_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'],$reg);
if(!isset($reg[1])) {
return -1;
} else {
//return floatval($reg[1]);
if(floatval($reg[1]) == ‘6′){ //checks for evil eye of ie6
return floatval($reg[1]); //here you can add other custom code as well
}else{
return ‘Not ie6, maybe 7 or 8′;
}
}
}
and to call it:
echo ieversion();