Is there a way to distinguish that my Javascript is running in a trident-based application vs. Internet Explorer?

Question

I've got a third party script that runs in many places on the web. I'd like to be able to tell when I'm running in an app vs. a browser. The user agent doesn't always help. Chrome provides the chrome object which has some different properties depending on the environment. Anyone know of anything similar for IE?

This is for a product similar to google analytics which can be implemented or wind up in many environments, and I'm trying to distinguish them better.

Answer 1

Check for window.external. If window.external is null then the web page is loaded into a Web Component, otherwise it is loaded via browser.

window.external enable you to communicate with [ComVisible(true)] instances which are enabled by default in the browsers. As long as your apps are not decorated with [ComVisible(true)], you can distinguish between app and browser page consumption.

• Read more about window.external on http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ie/ms535246%28v=vs.85%29.aspx