Redirect NOT IE users - html

Question

in my header I have:
<!--[if lte IE 8]>
<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="0; url=/ie-sucks" />
<script type="text/javascript">
/* <![CDATA[ */
window.top.location = '/ie-sucks';
/* ]]> */
</script>
The above code easily redirect the users which are using < IE 8 to another place ie-sucks
So this is working fine, but I just was checking the users, after they redirect to /ie-sucks, they open Mozilla Firefox and again copy paste the mysite.com/ie-sucks into the address bar, so then again they will encounter to that page...
I know this is stupid, but I need to redirect them from that page to the main site IF they are not below than IE8 OR using other browsers...
I fixed the IE users with this:
<!--[if !lte IE 8]>
But this code won't apply on Fiefox users...
How I could detect non-IE users and redirect them?
Thank in advance

Answer 1

The <!--[if ... ]> will only be handled by IE, that's the trick.
For redirecting Firefox or other browsers, you should better separate by user agent (but bear in mind, that changing the user agent is really simple!). This could be done using PHP for example:
<?php
$useragent = $_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT']; //get the user agent
if(!strpos($useragent, "MSIE")) {
// user agents from IE should always look like this and include 'MSIE':
// Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; MSIE 10.0; Windows NT 6.1; WOW64)
header("Location: http://example.com/");
}
?>
There might also be a JavaScript way by handling the user agent like this:
if(navigator.userAgent.indexOf('MSIE') == -1) { ...
But again: Keep in mind, that there could also be user agents, that could have "MSIE" inside their string or users with Internet Explorer, that will change it to "Firefox" or else. So this is not a fail-safe solution, but I guess, that could be an answer to your question.
PS: Why should anyway someone copy the URL from the IE conditional to its browser and view the "No IE wanted here" message? Anyone doing this should know, he isn't really using IE, so this shouldn't be confusing. You're making to many thoughts. You can't figure out all behaviors that other people will do ;)

Answer 2

You're just going to tie yourself up in knots doing what you're trying to do.
How about just displaying a message at the top of your page if users are using IE8 or less like in your original conditional statement?
Your message will simply suggest upgrading their browser or downloading Chrome, Firefox or whatever and also have the ability to close/hide the message.
<!--[if lte IE 8]>
.my-message {
display: block;
}
<![endif]-->