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Windows XP

With that brief history lesson out of the way, many different versions of Windows are out there to detect:

Windows 95

Windows 98

Windows NT 4.0

Windows 2000

Windows ME

Windows XP

Luckily, the operating system information is included in the user-agent string, meaning that the browser

gets to decide exactly what is displayed. The following table shows the different strings that are

included in the user-agent string depending on the operating system being used:

IE4+

NS4x

Mozilla

Opera pre-6 Opera 7+

Windows 95

“Windows “Win95” “Win95” “Windows “Windows

95”

Windows 98

“Windows “Win98” “Win98” “Windows “Windows

98”

Windows NT 4.0 “Windows “WinNT” “WinNT4.0” “Windows “Windows

NT”

NT 4.0”

Windows 2000 “Windows “Windows “Windows “Windows “Windows

NT 5.0” NT 5.0” NT 5.0”

2000”

NT 5.0”

Windows ME

“Win

“Windows “Win 9x

9x 4.90” 9x 4.90” 9x 4.90”

ME”

4.90”

Windows XP

“Windows “Windows “Windows “Windows “Windows

NT 5.1” NT 5.1” NT 5.1”

XP”

NT 5.1”

This task begins just like the task of detecting browser versions, by defining some variables:

var isWin95 = isWin98 = isWinNT4 = isWin2K = isWinME = isWinXP = false;

In order to determine each version of Windows, you must check the user-agent string for each value in a

row from the previous table. For example, if you want to check for Windows 98, you must check the

user-agent string for

“Windows 98”

and

“Win98”

, which covers all four browsers.

The easiest checks are for the Windows 95, 98, ME, 2000, and XP because they have only two values:

if (isWin) {

isWin95 = sUserAgent.indexOf(“Win95”) > -1

|| sUserAgent.indexOf(“Windows 95”) > -1;

isWin98 = sUserAgent.indexOf(“Win98”) > -1

|| sUserAgent.indexOf(“Windows 98”) > -1;

isWinME = sUserAgent.indexOf(“Win 9x 4.90”) > -1

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