Question

I have a page that notifies users of Internet Explorer 8 and below that my site probably will have issues when viewed with IE, I’m using the HTTP redirect which is in the index.html page, so when they hit index, they go to the page “ie.html”. But then if they click “Continue anyway” how can I send them back to the index without having them redirected again?

I’ve seen on other sites they’ll do something like http://site.com/index.html?ignore_err

Is that what I need to do? If so, how?

Thanks so much.

Answer 1

I would set a cookie, so the opt-in persists (as long as the user has the cookie or it expires). I’m sure you’re not wanting to hammer your users with requests to update to a newer browser. 🙂

From: http://techpatterns.com/downloads/javascript_cookies.php

ie.html

function SetCookie( name, value, expires, path, domain, secure )
{
    // set time, it's in milliseconds
    var today = new Date();
    today.setTime( today.getTime() );

/*
    if the expires variable is set, make the correct
    expires time, the current script below will set
    it for x number of days, to make it for hours,
    delete * 24, for minutes, delete * 60 * 24
*/
if ( expires )
{
    expires = expires * 1000 * 60 * 60 * 24;
}
var expires_date = new Date( today.getTime() + (expires) );

document.cookie = name + "=" +escape( value ) +
    ( ( expires ) ? ";expires=" + expires_date.toGMTString() : "" ) +
    ( ( path ) ? ";path=" + path : "" ) +
    ( ( domain ) ? ";domain=" + domain : "" ) +
    ( ( secure ) ? ";secure" : "" );
}

document.cookie = SetCookie('allowolderie','true','365','/','.example.com');

Then, within your IE conditional, check that the cookie is not true before redirecting:

index.html

<!--[if lte IE 8]>
<script type="text/javascript">
function readCookie(name) {
    var nameEQ = name + "=";
    var ca = document.cookie.split(';');
    for(var i=0;i < ca.length;i++) {
        var c = ca[i];
        while (c.charAt(0)==' ') c = c.substring(1,c.length);
        if (c.indexOf(nameEQ) == 0) return c.substring(nameEQ.length,c.length);
    }
    return null;
}
if (readCookie('allowoldie') != 'true') {
    window.location = 'ie.html';
}
</script>
<![endif]-->

This way, you don’t have to put it in the GET string and maintain it for the user, although I suppose you could do that as a backup.