How to do browser detection with jQuery 1.3 with $.browser.msie deprecated?

.browser has been deprecated in favour of .support. More information over here: jquery.support What this essentially means is that instead of using browser sniffing, jquery now does feature support detection and allows for much finer grained control over what the browser can do.

From the description:

Added in jQuery 1.3 A collection of properties that represent the presence of different browser features or bugs.

jQuery comes with a number of properties included, you should feel free to add your own. Many of these properties are rather low-level so it's doubtful that they'll be useful in general day-to-day development, but mostly used by plugin and core developers.

The values of all the support properties are determined using feature detection (and do not use any form of browser sniffing)

I was facing something similar, there's no $.support.png (p.ej.), so I need to use the $.browser.version yet, maybe we can just keep asking for more $.support.XXXX properties, as much as needed.

feature support sounds a good idea, BUT it will only work as is intended when it supports all possible "bugs". Like the first commenter, there is no $support.png, or a $support.stepping, or a $support.peekaboo, or a, oh, the list goes on. The problem with this is that some code to make one browser compliant will inevitable end up being executed by a browser that does not need it.

Yes, the browser detection has been deprecated, but the deprecated properties probably won't be removed from jQuery anytime soon. And when they will be removed, if you still absolutely need to do browser detection, you can add the same functionality easily with a small, simple plugin.

So, my answer is to do nothing about it, for now :)

edit: I'll even provide you with a plugin to use in the future (not tested, copy-pasted from jquery source):

(function($) {
    var userAgent = navigator.userAgent.toLowerCase();

    $.browser = {
        version: (userAgent.match( /.+(?:rv|it|ra|ie)[\/: ]([\d.]+)/ ) || [0,'0'])[1],
        safari: /webkit/.test( userAgent ),
        opera: /opera/.test( userAgent ),
        msie: /msie/.test( userAgent ) && !/opera/.test( userAgent ),
        mozilla: /mozilla/.test( userAgent ) && !/(compatible|webkit)/.test( userAgent )
    };

})(jQuery);