When you want to save logs on your website for any events like visits, errors, etc., it would be good if you add the browser name also. In case of errors, this information will do great for you, because client-side script errors and malfunctions might be browser dependant, and you would have to really debug them on those browsers in some cases.

You can extract the browser name from the UserAgent string of the Request.UserAgent is a string which is used to identify a browser or a search bot or any kind of program to a server. This string will contain the browser keywords, version string, operating system and information on some of the browser plugins and system specifications. This is long string with length ranging from 20 to 200 and above characters.

The UserAgent string will be a part of the HTTP Header of the request made to a server, and it will not be visible from the browser. But at the server, you can catch this UserAgent from the request header. In ASP.NET, Request.UserAgent will return the UserAgent string.

The HTTP Header will look like this:

HTTP_CONNECTION:Keep-Alive
HTTP_ACCEPT:application/x-ms-application, image/jpeg, application/xaml+xml, image/gif, image/pjpeg, application/x-ms-xbap, application/x-shockwave-flash, application/x-silverlight, application/vnd.ms-excel, application/vnd.ms-powerpoint, application/msword, */*
HTTP_ACCEPT_ENCODING:gzip, deflate
HTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE:en-IN
HTTP_COOKIE:UserInteraction=KonaBase
HTTP_HOST:whatsmyuseragent.com
HTTP_REFERER:http://www.google.com/search?q=what+is+my+User+agent%3F&sourceid=ie7&rls=com.microsoft:en-in:IE-Address&ie=&oe=
HTTP_USER_AGENT:Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 8.0; Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; Trident/4.0; SLCC2; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 3.5.30729; .NET CLR 3.0.30729; Media Center PC 6.0; InfoPath.2; Creative AutoUpdate v1.40.03) chromeframe/5.0.317.0

The header contains many name-value pairs, and HTTP_USER_AGENT is one among them, which holds the UserAgent string. As you see in the above example, my UserAgent for Internet Explorer 8.0 from Windows 7 is:

Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 8.0; Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; Trident/4.0; SLCC2; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 3.5.30729; .NET CLR 3.0.30729; Media Center PC 6.0; InfoPath.2; Creative AutoUpdate v1.40.03) chromeframe/5.0.317.0

The clause MSIE 8.0 in the above string says that this is an Internet Explorer 8.0 browser.

http://www.whatsmyuseragent.com will tell you about the HTTP Header and UserAgent value of your browser

The following VB.NET Snippet will help you to parse the Browser Name from the UserAgent string:

    Public Shared Function GetBrowserName() As String
        Dim userAgent As String = Request.UserAgent
        If userAgent.Contains("MSIE 5.0") Then
            Return "Internet Explorer 5.0"
        ElseIf userAgent.Contains("MSIE 6.0") Then
            Return "Internet Explorer 6.0"
        ElseIf userAgent.Contains("MSIE 7.0") Then
            Return "Internet Explorer 7.0"
        ElseIf userAgent.Contains("MSIE 8.0") Then
            Return "Internet Explorer 8.0"
        ElseIf userAgent.Contains("Firefox") Then
            Return userAgent.Substring(userAgent.IndexOf("Firefox")).Replace("/", " ")
        ElseIf userAgent.Contains("Opera") Then
            Return userAgent.Substring(userAgent.IndexOf("Opera"))
        ElseIf userAgent.Contains("Chrome") Then
            Dim agentPart As String = userAgent.Substring(userAgent.IndexOf("Chrome"))
            Return agentPart.Substring(0, agentPart.IndexOf("Safari") - 1).Replace("/", " ")
        ElseIf userAgent.Contains("Safari") Then
            Dim agentPart As String = userAgent.Substring(userAgent.IndexOf("Version"))
            Dim version As String = agentPart.Substring(0, agentPart.IndexOf("Safari") - 1).Replace("Version/", "")
            Return "Safari " & version
        ElseIf userAgent.Contains("Konqueror") Then
            Dim agentPart As String = userAgent.Substring(userAgent.IndexOf("Konqueror"))
            Return agentPart.Substring(0, agentPart.IndexOf(";")).Replace("/", " ")
        ElseIf userAgent.ToLower.Contains("bot") Or userAgent.ToLower.Contains("search") Then
            Return "Search Bot"
        End If
        Return "Unknown Browser or Bot"
    End Function

You can add more browsers to this code, if you can research on more browsers and search engine bots. Hope this article will help you in recording and analyzing activities on your website.