Yahoo Search Tabs

Only available to IE users?

[limbo]

On the yahoo.com home page I notice that the tabs allowing searches through images, yellow pages, news and products are only available to IE users. I have tested the site with the latest versions of firefox, opera, mozilla and netscape and none of them have the tabs.

So two questions.

1. Why do they do this?
2. How is this done?

Ta, Limbo

[Yahoo_Mike]

Limbo,

We do it because those browsers don't support the javascript we use to show the tabs. Instead, we use a drop down for vertical search selection on those browsers.

Yahoo! Mike

[limbo]

Thanks for the reply Y!Mike

So how are the browsers 'sniffed'? What technology is used to make that identification? and how is it applied? I see the <!--[if IE]> command in the source but see nothing to make that adjustment as the user 'lands'. Is it serverside?

Ta, Limbo

[encyclo]

<!--[if IE]>

It's an IE conditional comment [msdn.microsoft.com] - other browsers see a standard comment block, but IE parses it.

[limbo]

Cheers Encyclo! Something new! (to me)

Thanks for the heads up. I had heard this mentioned here some time ago but never got around to see what it was - will have a tinker with one or two things this savo.

its a bit condescending of MS to group all other browsers in the 'downlevel browser' bracket. I think they should reconsider the terminology to 'browsers more than likely superior to IE and its dusty relatives' ;)

[encyclo]

The IE conditional comments are perfect for correcting IE's CSS weaknesses wih a few chosen rules in an IE-only stylesheet, as well as delivering IE-only stuff such as "bookmark this page".

I have to say, though, I'm surprised that Yahoo can't fix their tabs to be cross-browser - they used to be the kings of the "works the same in Netscape 2 upwards" brigade. If they're not interested in "downlevel" (!) browsers, they could save a packet on bandwidth if they cleaned up their markup a bit!