Redirect rules for internet explorer in htaccess

[awong316]

Hi All,

I've been trying to get a way to redirect all users on IE that visit a certain page to a different page in the htaccess.

Below are the fixes I've come up with, but neither of them worked.

This had no effect whatsoever
# BEGIN IE FIX
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} .*Trident.* [NC]
RewriteRule ^/quote https://www.example.com/custom-inquiry/ [R,L]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} .*MSIE.* [NC]
RewriteRule ^/quote https://www.example.com/custom-inquiry/ [R,L]
# END IE FIX

This redirected all users instead of just IE users
# BEGIN IE FIX
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} .*Trident.* [NC]
Redirect 301 /quote https://www.example.com/custom-inquiry
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} .*MSIE.* [NC]
Redirect 301 /quote https://www.example.com/custom-inquiry
# END IE FIX

[lucy24]

#1

htaccess
...
RewriteRule ^/

There's your problem.

#2 mod_alias (Redirect by that name) can't evaluate conditions.

#3 Each module is an island. A RewriteCond will not be applied to a mod_alias Redirect just because the two are physically adjacent in the htaccess file.

[not2easy]

In case the terminology is not familiar, the mod_alias advice refers to the line that starts with:

Redirect 301

it is ignoring your RewriteCond.

---

another idea -

RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} .*Trident.* [NC]

and

RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} .*MSIE.* [NC]

can usually be simplified to

RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} (MSIE|Trident) [NC] 

(and/or)

[awong316]

RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} (MSIE|Trident) [NC]

Would this still need the *asterisk in the front and back of each in order to catch the user agent?

[not2easy]

Would this still need the *asterisk...

No, because the items within parentheses indicate (contains) and by separating the two terms with "|" it means "and/or" so it would be any UA that contains "MSIE" or "Trident" or "MSIE and Trident"

[phranque]

also note that the [R,L] flag will generate a 302 by default.
if you want a 301 you must use [R=301,L]

[lucy24]

Leading or trailing .* (or .+) are only ever needed if you are capturing. In fact it's possible these forms will take an extra picosecond of server time, because it first grabs the entire string and then says “Oh, oops, I was supposed to leave room for a ‘Trident’”. That sounds like a chewing-gum commercial, but it can't be helped.