Sometimes you just have to sniff for Internet Explorer 6 (and under) in JavaScript. Using conditional comments is a decent solution, but I don't want them scattered all over my code.

With a bit of help from Dean Edwards, I worked out the following:

var IE6 = false /*@cc_on || @_jscript_version < 5.7 @*/;

With just a single conditional comment, you can have a JavaScript variable that you can reuse throughout your code.

(IE6 will be true in Internet Explorer 6 and under, but does anyone really care about IE5 anymore? Thought not.)

You could use this technique to sniff for other things:

// exactly Internet Explorer 7
var IE7 = false /*@cc_on || @_jscript_version == 5.7 @*/;

// at least Internet Explorer 7
var gteIE7 = false /*@cc_on || @_jscript_version >= 5.7 @*/;

// any Internet Explorer (thanks to Dean)
var isMSIE = /*@cc_on!@*/false;

Note: browser sniffing is evil but sometimes painfully necessary.