Question

I need to load in different movie formats based on browser type. Specifically if the user is using firefox then I need to load in a .ocv video.

I have tried using:

alert(navigator.appName); 

but this always returns ‘Netscape’ in both chrome and firefox??

Is there a better alternative?

Cheers

Answer 1

STOP!!! all proposed solutions are the reason the web is broken&breaking!

Don’t assume a browser, based on the name you regexp out of the userAgent, can do something or not just because it sais its an IE, Firefox or Chrome. UserAgents can be and are faked! Do a feature detection either by hand or use something fullfeatured like Modernizr

What you want to do is provided via javascript. To check if the browser can do html5 video playback;

var canHtml5Video=function(){
    return !!document.createElement("video").canPlayType;
}

To check if the Browser can play a certain type (mp4, ogg), use the canPlayType method of the audio/video element.

var elem=document.getElementsByTagName("video")[0];
if (elem.canPlayType("video/mp4")===""){
    //handle firefox and all browser that cant pay the mp4 royality fee
}
else{
    //handle mp4
}

Alternativ, you can just add multiple source elements to the video element. The Browser will chose what fits best.

<video>
    <source src="http://....mp4" type="video/mp4" />
    <source src="http://....ocv" type="video/ogg" />
</video>