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Show HN: Get pinged when standards hit 90% browser support

199 points by AlexMuir 12y ago

AlexMuir 12y ago
I built this over the weekend because browser support is a moving feast. I'd find myself exploring SVG, thinking "That's great - I can't wait to use it." And then not noticing that there is basically 95% support now.
- davezatch 12y ago
  Very cool. Signed up. I often find myself looking at technologies and thinking "Oh, I'll use that someday," then forgetting about them. Feature request: Allow user to set minimum required browser support more granularly, e.g. 'IE>9 && 90%', kind of like how https://github.com/postcss/autoprefixer https://github.com/postcss/autoprefixer does
- jahnu 12y ago
  Great idea. I wonder if there is public data making a ping by market segment possible too. For example I have to maintain a web app which is aimed at corporate users thus our current baseline is "it has to work in IE8 but it's allowed to look ugly until IE10" so if some sample of usage by IPs owned by known businesses fell below a certain threshold I could be informed.
- the_imp 12y ago
  In addition to email, could you provide an RSS feed as well?
  - AlexMuir 12y ago
    I think there's an RSS feed at caniuse.com so that should probably be the primary source. But it's been requested a couple of times so I'll write it on a list and get it up at some point.
- primitivesuave 12y ago
  This is so cool, I had a similar idea when Yo came out (a Yo app that Yo's you when there are changes in web standards and adoption rates). This implementation is great and very straightforward!
EGreg 12y ago
This is a great idea! Useful to us :)
thameera 12y ago
This is pretty useful! As an aside, please consider sending a confirmation email to the address and subscribing only afterwards.
- CyberShadow 12y ago
  ...why? Send an email to confirm that it should send one more email?
  - mrkipling 12y ago
    > ...why? So that if somebody mis-types their address and ends up entering mine, I don't get bombarded with crap that I don't want. It's incredibly annoying when this happens.
    - brlewis 12y ago
      This service sends one email. Confirmation would just mean you get bombarded with the exact same number of unwanted messages: 1. Confirmation would still be useful, though, to let the actual user realize they entered the wrong address.
      - LukeB_UK 12y ago
        It sounds as though it actually sends you multiple emails
  - daviddoran 12y ago
    This is typically so you can't simply subscribe someone else using their email. The 'victim' would only get a single email and they'd have to subscribe to keep receiving them. It also avoids typos etc.
    - CyberShadow 12y ago
      I had the impression that you chose a standard you care about and it is going to send exactly one email. With confirmation, that would become two.
klum 12y ago
Cool! Any possibility you'll add an RSS feed in the future? (Unless there is one and I missed it)
renekooi 12y ago
Nice work! I'd been using http://caniuse.com/#info_news http://caniuse.com/#info_news, but it requires some manual checking still :)
ZeroGravitas 12y ago
Knowing when it "works", including polyfills and graceful degradation, is more useful, but may involve more human input to decide. (The country you target can have a big impact on support numbers too, due to differences in browser usage)
userbinator 12y ago
This is probably a rather unpopular position among web developers, but please don't let your desire for the new and shiny get in the way of making the content on your site widely accessible. I've seen quite a few sites turned from simple and easily readable to complex, slow-loading and irritatingly gimmicky because the developers felt like putting in all the bells and whistles they could.
- eloisant 12y ago
  Sometimes it's the other way around. Designer wants a specific effect anyway, and switching from an ugly Javascript/jQuery implementation to a simple (but recent) CSS rule can greatly improve accessibility and performances.
- klum 12y ago
  Of course, and there are a bunch of beautifully designed websites consisting mostly of text and images where scrolling is laggy even on a modern computer. On the other hand, new features in HTML, CSS and JS occasionally let you replace a complex, slow-loading and irritatingly gimmicky workaround with simple, clean code :).
- jlebrech 12y ago
  maybe it's not just useful for the now. it could tell you in 5 years time to tweak a few things.
- sondr3 12y ago
  Anything over 90% is good enough for me personally, I can't be bothered to not use recent features in CSS/HTML because IE>9 us god awful and Opera Mini doesn't support it.
jscheel 12y ago
I'm not sure "user-select: none" is "2 days away." I shudder to think about the hacks I've done to make it work. My favorite is capturing clicks on an overlay, then translating the click point to where it needs to be and simulating a new click with the modified values on the underlying layer, which also happened to be in an iframe. I still get shivers.
- userbinator 12y ago
  I'm curious what you're trying to do. That rule sounds like it would be perfect for causing the same sort of irritation as the "disable right-click" and "disable copy-paste" scripts that were popular years ago.
  - maaarghk 12y ago
    The spec suggests that it would more be to avoid selecting things that are not part of the text flow of the document, which would be a usability win. i.e. captions that are in the middle of the flow, etc. But you're right to point out it could be used by the unscrupulous sort of people who also like to disable right click, and that would indeed by highly annoying.
    - frivoal 12y ago
      If you have suggestions on how to mitigate that (making the feature less useful as a copy protection without affecting (too much) the intended use, I'm happy to update the spec.
      - encoderer 12y ago
        Is a modifier key possible? E.g. holding down shift allows you to select all text? Or a context-menu option on the unselectable text to copy the whole block? Excuse my naiveté.
        frivoal 12y ago
        CSS is device neutral and works on things that don't have shift keys or context menus, so we can't specify the mechanism. However, we can make it allowed, or even recommended for browsers to provide a way to select anyway, even if the spec leaves it up to the browser what UI it wants to use for that.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
Everhusk 12y ago
I find it an odd coincidence that both CSS3 Animations and CSS3 Transitions hit 90% support in the same week (both pretty major features). It seems unlikely that a large percentage of people decided to update their browsers simultaneously. Is there another way features can gain browser support that I am missing?
- sukilot 12y ago
  They both launched in the same browser version of a major browser? Updated measurement methodology gave them both a boost?
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
  - Everhusk 12y ago
    The first would still require a large number of people to update their browser in a short period. Seems they are pulling data from caniuse.com which uses StatCounter Global. StatCounter updates their data 4 times a day and doesn't seem to have changed recently. http://gs.statcounter.com/faq#methodology http://gs.statcounter.com/faq#methodology.
    - BrandonLive 12y ago
      Since most browsers shipped these together (as they're closely related), it would be very surprising if this didn't happen at the same time for both.
martin-adams 12y ago
I'm confused. Is this if it is supported by 90% of browsers, or 90% of global traffic? What might be interesting here is using my own web site traffic to know whether 90% of my visitors will be supported. A simple transparent GIF should be enough to send the UA to an analytics server (or use Google Analytics)
- encoderer 12y ago
  > A simple transparent GIF should be enough to send the UA to an analytics server (or use Google Analytics) That's a hell of a scope creep.
- AlexMuir 12y ago
  90% of global browsers. I believe you can import your Google Analytics data into http://caniuse.com http://caniuse.com for this depth of information.
- Aardwolf 12y ago
  What browsers are considered in this percentage? If 27 (lots of obscure) browsers support it, but 3 major ones (e.g. chrome, firefox, ie) don't, is it considered 90%?
janpieterz 12y ago
Very cool, always been a bit of a struggle. I know this has been mentioned slightly before, but what about making this data intersect with the traffic usage. I know this could make it very difficult but maybe combining a couple of sources with summarized data can be relatively easy and one can have a "get pinged when standards hit 90% of internet usage"
kangax 12y ago
Great idea! We need the same for ES6/7/etc. — http://kangax.github.io/compat-table/es6/ http://kangax.github.io/compat-table/es6/

199 points by AlexMuir 12y ago

I built this over the weekend because browser support is a moving feast. I'd find myself exploring SVG, thinking "That's great - I can't wait to use it." And then not noticing that there is basically 95% support now.

davezatch 12y ago
Very cool. Signed up. I often find myself looking at technologies and thinking "Oh, I'll use that someday," then forgetting about them. Feature request: Allow user to set minimum required browser support more granularly, e.g. 'IE>9 && 90%', kind of like how https://github.com/postcss/autoprefixer https://github.com/postcss/autoprefixer does
jahnu 12y ago
Great idea. I wonder if there is public data making a ping by market segment possible too. For example I have to maintain a web app which is aimed at corporate users thus our current baseline is "it has to work in IE8 but it's allowed to look ugly until IE10" so if some sample of usage by IPs owned by known businesses fell below a certain threshold I could be informed.
the_imp 12y ago
In addition to email, could you provide an RSS feed as well?
- AlexMuir 12y ago
  I think there's an RSS feed at caniuse.com so that should probably be the primary source. But it's been requested a couple of times so I'll write it on a list and get it up at some point.
primitivesuave 12y ago
This is so cool, I had a similar idea when Yo came out (a Yo app that Yo's you when there are changes in web standards and adoption rates). This implementation is great and very straightforward!

EGreg 12y ago

This is a great idea! Useful to us :)

thameera 12y ago

This is pretty useful! As an aside, please consider sending a confirmation email to the address and subscribing only afterwards.

CyberShadow 12y ago
...why? Send an email to confirm that it should send one more email?
- mrkipling 12y ago
  > ...why? So that if somebody mis-types their address and ends up entering mine, I don't get bombarded with crap that I don't want. It's incredibly annoying when this happens.
  - brlewis 12y ago
    This service sends one email. Confirmation would just mean you get bombarded with the exact same number of unwanted messages: 1. Confirmation would still be useful, though, to let the actual user realize they entered the wrong address.
    - LukeB_UK 12y ago
      It sounds as though it actually sends you multiple emails
- daviddoran 12y ago
  This is typically so you can't simply subscribe someone else using their email. The 'victim' would only get a single email and they'd have to subscribe to keep receiving them. It also avoids typos etc.
  - CyberShadow 12y ago
    I had the impression that you chose a standard you care about and it is going to send exactly one email. With confirmation, that would become two.

klum 12y ago

Cool! Any possibility you'll add an RSS feed in the future? (Unless there is one and I missed it)

renekooi 12y ago

Nice work! I'd been using http://caniuse.com/#info_news http://caniuse.com/#info_news, but it requires some manual checking still :)

ZeroGravitas 12y ago

Knowing when it "works", including polyfills and graceful degradation, is more useful, but may involve more human input to decide. (The country you target can have a big impact on support numbers too, due to differences in browser usage)

userbinator 12y ago

This is probably a rather unpopular position among web developers, but please don't let your desire for the new and shiny get in the way of making the content on your site widely accessible. I've seen quite a few sites turned from simple and easily readable to complex, slow-loading and irritatingly gimmicky because the developers felt like putting in all the bells and whistles they could.

eloisant 12y ago
Sometimes it's the other way around. Designer wants a specific effect anyway, and switching from an ugly Javascript/jQuery implementation to a simple (but recent) CSS rule can greatly improve accessibility and performances.
klum 12y ago
Of course, and there are a bunch of beautifully designed websites consisting mostly of text and images where scrolling is laggy even on a modern computer. On the other hand, new features in HTML, CSS and JS occasionally let you replace a complex, slow-loading and irritatingly gimmicky workaround with simple, clean code :).
jlebrech 12y ago
maybe it's not just useful for the now. it could tell you in 5 years time to tweak a few things.
sondr3 12y ago
Anything over 90% is good enough for me personally, I can't be bothered to not use recent features in CSS/HTML because IE>9 us god awful and Opera Mini doesn't support it.

jscheel 12y ago

I'm not sure "user-select: none" is "2 days away." I shudder to think about the hacks I've done to make it work. My favorite is capturing clicks on an overlay, then translating the click point to where it needs to be and simulating a new click with the modified values on the underlying layer, which also happened to be in an iframe. I still get shivers.

userbinator 12y ago
I'm curious what you're trying to do. That rule sounds like it would be perfect for causing the same sort of irritation as the "disable right-click" and "disable copy-paste" scripts that were popular years ago.
- maaarghk 12y ago
  The spec suggests that it would more be to avoid selecting things that are not part of the text flow of the document, which would be a usability win. i.e. captions that are in the middle of the flow, etc. But you're right to point out it could be used by the unscrupulous sort of people who also like to disable right click, and that would indeed by highly annoying.
  - frivoal 12y ago
    If you have suggestions on how to mitigate that (making the feature less useful as a copy protection without affecting (too much) the intended use, I'm happy to update the spec.
    - encoderer 12y ago
      Is a modifier key possible? E.g. holding down shift allows you to select all text? Or a context-menu option on the unselectable text to copy the whole block? Excuse my naiveté.
      - frivoal 12y ago
        CSS is device neutral and works on things that don't have shift keys or context menus, so we can't specify the mechanism. However, we can make it allowed, or even recommended for browsers to provide a way to select anyway, even if the spec leaves it up to the browser what UI it wants to use for that.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

Everhusk 12y ago

I find it an odd coincidence that both CSS3 Animations and CSS3 Transitions hit 90% support in the same week (both pretty major features). It seems unlikely that a large percentage of people decided to update their browsers simultaneously. Is there another way features can gain browser support that I am missing?

sukilot 12y ago
They both launched in the same browser version of a major browser? Updated measurement methodology gave them both a boost?
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- Everhusk 12y ago
  The first would still require a large number of people to update their browser in a short period. Seems they are pulling data from caniuse.com which uses StatCounter Global. StatCounter updates their data 4 times a day and doesn't seem to have changed recently. http://gs.statcounter.com/faq#methodology http://gs.statcounter.com/faq#methodology.
  - BrandonLive 12y ago
    Since most browsers shipped these together (as they're closely related), it would be very surprising if this didn't happen at the same time for both.

martin-adams 12y ago

I'm confused. Is this if it is supported by 90% of browsers, or 90% of global traffic? What might be interesting here is using my own web site traffic to know whether 90% of my visitors will be supported. A simple transparent GIF should be enough to send the UA to an analytics server (or use Google Analytics)

encoderer 12y ago
> A simple transparent GIF should be enough to send the UA to an analytics server (or use Google Analytics) That's a hell of a scope creep.
AlexMuir 12y ago
90% of global browsers. I believe you can import your Google Analytics data into http://caniuse.com http://caniuse.com for this depth of information.
Aardwolf 12y ago
What browsers are considered in this percentage? If 27 (lots of obscure) browsers support it, but 3 major ones (e.g. chrome, firefox, ie) don't, is it considered 90%?

janpieterz 12y ago

Very cool, always been a bit of a struggle. I know this has been mentioned slightly before, but what about making this data intersect with the traffic usage. I know this could make it very difficult but maybe combining a couple of sources with summarized data can be relatively easy and one can have a "get pinged when standards hit 90% of internet usage"

kangax 12y ago

Great idea! We need the same for ES6/7/etc. — http://kangax.github.io/compat-table/es6/ http://kangax.github.io/compat-table/es6/