Q21 Can I detect the language set in user's browser?

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Depending on whether the users browser is using a particular language then it is possible to detect this by analysing the navigator.userAgent for characters with right angle brackets: [ ].

For example, on my browser the userAgent returns the following:

Mozilla/4.0 [en] (Win95; I)

This can be retrieved using:

<script language="JavaScript"><!--
var start = navigator.userAgent.indexOf('[');
if (start > -1) {
    var end = navigator.userAgent.indexOf(']');
    if (end > -1) {
        var language = navigator.userAgent.substring(start+1,end);
        document.write("<P>Language = " + language);
    }
}
//--></script>

Since this was answered, you can now make use of the Navigator objects language or browserLanguage property, i.e. navigator.language, navigator.browserLanguage. See http://www.irt.org/articles/js082 for further details.

©2018 Martin Webb