So if someone tells IE to act like an older version, they can't use any plugins that use jQuery's browser detection?
I'm really not seeing a problem here. Simply don't -do- that. The old versions really suck.
Agreed, isn't <meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=7" /> just for people whose website breaks in IE8, but works in IE7 and they can't be bothered to update it?
Do not use UA sniffing, use only feature detection, period.
I thought jQuery was depreciating $.browser anyways...