Compress Some Files Using Gzip/deflate?

I want to compress some javascript files using gzip/deflate.

The thing I worry about though is browser support. In my searches, I've seen some suggestions that some older browsers will send the http Accept-Encoding: gzip header, but they aren't actually capable of using a compressed javascript file.

I've seen various solutions which try to sniff the browser via the user_agent header and just serve the uncompressed version when it thinks the browser is gonna choke on it. But the sniffing examples I've seen seem to vary a lot, and I worry they aren't very good.

For example, look at the sample provided by the apache manual [URL] Used as-is, that's gonna catch opera and serve it an uncompressed file, when opera will handle it just fine. And I've also seen people say safari(which versions I'm not sure) doesn't like compressed javascript either, but I don't see anything in the example provided by mod_deflate that would save safari from doom.

Many of the webpages I've come across on this subject seem outdated or incomplete, which doesn't do much for my confidence.

What do you do? Part of me want's to just give these buggy browsers what they ask for when they say they accept gzip/deflate and let them explode....but I think there's still too many users of these older browsers to just do that. I feel I should make a good faith effort to try to make it work reasonably well. This seems like a very realistic issue and I'm somewhat suprised I'm not finding more information on it.