TFfan,
Your question is a false choice.
Except for occasional bits of weirdness, chances are if you're encountering something that requires you make such a decision, there is probably a third option: avoid that functionality.
If you design your pages and your site from the beginning to pass the w3c tests and to run pleasantly under the basic browser-set (IE, netscap, mozilla), then you'll have a web page/site that will be enjoyed by pretty much everybody who visits it.
For some things, there
are browser-specific pecadilloes. Consider it a challenge to work around that crap. Yes, sometimes this can be a pain, but the only way to win the browser-functionality contest is to simply not play. Find a solution that doesn't care
which browser runs.
I ran across a thing in a script: I did a JavaScript split command in a string on a character. IE and Netscape handled the results differently if the character didn't exist in the string (which could happen). I almost, in frustration, wrote a what-browser's-running function. But then I realized that was the wrong path. Instead, I assigned the value of the split to a variable and determined the type of the variable. In one case, it was Null, in another case, it was not Null, but it was empty. Aha! So, I used
that as my check. Now, instead of checking some kind of name-of-browser string, I simply check for the actual thing that is relevent: how does this browser handle that weird little split. Voila. No checking for browser type.
In short, write for the world, not for Microsoft or Netscape or Mozilla. If you must add a decision-tree in your code, do so based on the actual thing you're checking, not along browser titles.
Cheers,
![[monkey] [monkey] [monkey]](/data/assets/smilies/monkey.gif)
Edward
"Cut a hole in the door. Hang a flap. Criminy, why didn't I think of this earlier?!" -- inventor of the cat door