How could I add an "unsupported browser warning" for Confluence comparable to that of JIRA?

Question

We have noticed with the latest versions of Confluence and JIRA in our company the following:

* When I open JIRA in IE8, I get an "unsupported browser warning" in the window (JIRA 6.3.15).
* When I open a Confluence wiki page (or anything else) in IE8, the page is broken, but there is no warning at all (Confluence 5.7.1)

I would like to know what the best option could be to get a similar behavior for Confluence. Especially the following questions are here relevant:

* Where to add the code: I know the site and content layouts, where is the best place to add it?
* How to add it: Just edit the layout, are there any drawbacks, how about updating the versions?
* What to display: What is the best Confluence / HTML source code to add here?

As background: our company has (for the next 6 months) set IE8 as default browser, and a lot of users experience problems they cannot solve on their own.

Here are the screenshots that show the difference.

IE8-confluence.png

Confluence screenshot

IE8-jira.png

JIRA screenshot

IE8-confluence.png

IE8-jira.png

Alex Yasurek · Answer

I can help you with the where to add it and how to add it part, but what to display is up to you. First off you have to be a confluence admin to do this since you need permission to the admin area of confluence. 1) Click on the gear in the top right and select "General configuration" from the drop down 2) Scroll down until you see "Custom HTML" on the left side of the page under LOOK AND FEEL heading 3)Click on "Custom HTML" which should bring you to a page with three text areas 4)Click "Edit" at the bottom 5) Enter the following code in the text area labeled "At the end of the HEAD" (first textarea box on page) 6) Edit the alert message to whatever you like Let me know if that works for you.

unknown · Answer

Thank's for the hint, but it is only a part of the solution. I need additionally (and will add that to the question): where to add the code, how to add it, what to display.

Alex Yasurek · Answer

Hi,

We have run into the same issue and what I did was just send out an alert on every page to the user if they are using IE8 or lower. We have a custom theme so I added the javascript code there but you can also add it to the custom html section in the admin area. We also have users in different countries so I also check to see what language they have their browser set to and display the alert in the appropriate language.

Here is a link to the browser detection code I found and  am using. You may just have to customize it to your needs but it works well:  https://gist.github.com/nardev/4093811