

Show HN: Get pinged when standards hit 90% browser support - AlexMuir
http://frontendhq.com/pinger

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AlexMuir
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.

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the_imp
In addition to email, could you provide an RSS feed as well?

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AlexMuir
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.

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userbinator
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.

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eloisant
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.

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thameera
This is pretty useful!

As an aside, please consider sending a confirmation email to the address and
subscribing only afterwards.

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CyberShadow
...why? Send an email to confirm that it should send one more email?

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daviddoran
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
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.

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

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

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jscheel
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.

~~~
frivoal
If you care for "user-select: none", you might be surprised to know that there
wasn't an official spec for it to help the browsers interoperably converge,
and you might be happy to learn that I just made one:
[http://dev.w3.org/csswg/css-ui-4/#content-
selection](http://dev.w3.org/csswg/css-ui-4/#content-selection)

~~~
pc2g4d
This is my first exposure to "user-select: none" and it strikes me as a copy
control mechanism. Is that the only reason for this, or are their other use
cases?

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giovannibajo1
Very useful for kiosks where people interact with a screen and have no clue
they are using a maximized browser. Selecting text of labels is not expected
in a "native" app

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martin-adams
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)

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encoderer
> 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.

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ZeroGravitas
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)

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janpieterz
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"

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Everhusk
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?

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sukilot
They both launched in the same browser version of a major browser?

Updated measurement methodology gave them both a boost?

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Everhusk
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
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.

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

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EGreg
This is a great idea! Useful to us :)

