I originally posted this as a gist, here. I thought it best to keep my readers informed so that’s why I’m posting it here too:

// ----------------------------------------------------------
// A short snippet for detecting versions of IE in JavaScript
// without resorting to user-agent sniffing
// ----------------------------------------------------------
// If you're not in IE (or IE version is less than 5) then:
//     ie === undefined
// If you're in IE (>=5) then you can determine which version:
//     ie === 7; // IE7
// Thus, to detect IE:
//     if (ie) {}
// And to detect the version:
//     ie === 6 // IE6
//     ie > 7 // IE8, IE9 ...
//     ie < 9 // Anything less than IE9
// ----------------------------------------------------------
 
// UPDATE: Now using Live NodeList idea from @jdalton
 
var ie = (function(){
 
    var undef,
        v = 3,
        div = document.createElement('div'),
        all = div.getElementsByTagName('i');
 
    while (
        div.innerHTML = '<!--[if gt IE ' + (++v) + ']><i></i><![endif]-->',
        all[0]
    );
 
    return v > 4 ? v : undef;
 
}());

http://gist.github.com/527683

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