browser detection - Detecting IE6 using jQuery.support

Question

Anyone have any ideas on how to test for something specific for IE6 (and not IE7) using jquery.support?

My problem is that IE6 supports :hover psuedo-class only for anchor elements and IE7 does support it for all elements (as FF, Chrome, etc). So I want to do something special in case the browser does not support :hover for all elements... thus I need a way to test for this feature. (don't want to use jQuery.browser). Any ideas?

Answer 1

While it's good practice to check for feature support rather then user agent, there's no simple way to check for something like support of a css property using JavaScript. I recommend you either follow the above posters suggestion of using conditional comments or use jQuery.browser. A simple implementation (not validated for performance or bugs) could look like this:

if ($.browser.msie && $.browser.version.substr(0,1)<7) {
  // search for selectors you want to add hover behavior to
  $('.jshover').hover(
    function() {
      $(this).addClass('over');
    },
    function() {
      $(this).removeClass('over');
    }
}

In your markup, add the .jshover class to any element you want hover css effects on. In your css, add rules like this:

ul li:hover, ul li.over { rules here }