How to do "less than" with this...?

Try this:

$explode_set1 = explode('(',$_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT']);
$explode_set2 = explode(';',$explode_set1[1]);
foreach ($explode_set2 as $element) {
  if (ereg("MSIE",$element)) {
    $this_element = explode(' ',$element);
    if ($this_element < "8.0") {
      echo "true";
      break;
    } else {
      echo "false";
      break;
    }
  }
}

Select allOpen in new window

Yuck... I rushed that. Here is the correct code:

$explode_set1 = explode('(',$_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT']);
$explode_set2 = explode(';',$explode_set1[1]);
foreach ($explode_set2 as $element) {
  if (ereg("MSIE",$element)) {
    $this_element = trim($this_element);
    $this_element = explode(' ',$element);
    if ($this_element[2] < "8") {
      echo "true";
      break;
    } else {
      echo "false";
      break;
    }
  }
}

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I was thinking a more simple solution would be possible? :(

Like maybe a substr on MSI 8.0 to take it to character 5 which is the number 8, then compare to see if it's less than 8...

Would that be possible? Any implications in doing it that way? :S

Have you tried using the get_browser function?
http://php.net/manual/en/function.get-browser.php

Yeah, that'd be ideal, but it needs the browercap.ini file installed on the system and that's 300KB to load... a bit heavy to use for such a tiny feature... :(

Off the top of my head the above two solutions are all I can come up with.

I don't see how substr would work because the 'HTTP_USER_AGENT' variable would look different for every browser.

Guess you need to decide how important this feature is to you and whether you're willing to use a solution like the one provided above to accomplish it.

"I don't see how substr would work because the 'HTTP_USER_AGENT' variable would look different for every browser."

It's either going to be MSIE 6.0, MSIE 7.0, MSIE 8.0, I think... So I could use stristr to find the MSIE part, plus 4 characters, into a new string and then 5 characters in, would be the version number... Sounds flaky and fiddly I know.. I was hoping something along those lines could be done.. :(