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Undetectables

Iván Sánchez Ortega edited this page · 80 revisions

The Undetectables

These things cannot be feature detected. They must rely on either:

  1. UA sniffing
  2. Browser inferences
  3. Providing the same (slow) fix to everyone

Categories of Undetectables:

HTML5

  • registerProtocolHandler() support (existed in webkit but doesnt do anything, still live in iOS/Android likely.)
  • File Drag 'n Drop (webkit doesnt expose a global DataTransfer constuctor to inspect) issue 57
    • I think Modernizr.draganddrop && window.FileReader is good enough these days.
  • webforms UI: datepicker, colorpicker UIs cannot be detected, only the associated constraint validation
  • inability to edit things in contenteditable/designMode in mobile Webkit browsers

Audio/Video

  • timeupdate video/audio event fires inconsistently across webkit and moz
  • HTML5 video readyState is inconsistent across webkit(4) and moz(3)
  • canPlayType() results on mobile are unreliable
  • preload attribute support, can't be tested without bandwidth-consuming tests (Chrome has implemented the preload-IDL, but not the feature)
  • loop attribute support, can't be tested without bandwidth-consuming tests (support for this attribute is practically non-existent)

Networking

  • script tag onload/onerror/onreadystatechange actual behaviour (atomicity, order, etc etc)
  • link tag / stylesheet onload actual behaviour (exists in webkit / ff but never fires)
  • Network related metrics, a la the Browserscope Networking Results(|| script, css, etc)

Typography / Text

  • ClearType disabling during opacity changes
  • FOUT behavior of Gecko's @font-face support
  • font rendering (like smoothing, anti-aliasing, font-weight diffs among browsers/platforms)
  • consistent rendering ( in the page and alert() dialogs) of HTML entities
  • proper handling of CSS text-overflow:ellipsis behavior on text
  • native spellchecking (added in ie10pp3)

Events

  • keyboard event bugs, especially related to the keydown/keypress events, and the keyCode/charCode event properties.
  • the order (and reliability) of mousedown, click, and mouseup events (especially if a mousedblclick is happening)
    • especially when fired on a form element like a checkbox, reliability of state update of the element compared to when the events fire
  • whether a scroll wheel event is coming from a continuous device like a trackpad or the Magic Mouse or from a traditional clicking scroll wheel (in webkit).
  • onhashchange is case insensitive in IE8 (maybe 9 too?), all others are case sensitive (HTML5 requires case sensitivity). Can't be detected without actually triggering a hashchange event.
  • IE8 in compatibility view mode has onhashchange, but doesn't support it. Workaround is to test for document.documentMode > 8.
  • support for DOMContentLoaded.
    • You can add an event listener and hope, fall back to document.readyState or window.onload or in IE, the doScroll technique.
  • the oninput event.
  • WebKit popstate (history API) out-of-synch issues (http://www.bcherry.net/playground/pushstate)
  • The load event of the XHR2.upload fires in different times in different implementations. Firefox fires it too lately (when the download of the response completed and not when the upload actually ends).
  • iOS/Safari bounce scrolling: If the browser can temporarily scroll above to the top of the page (negative window.pageYOffset || documentElement.scrollTop || body.scrollTop) or below the bottom of the page.
  • The transitionend event doesn't fire correctly on some instances of webkit running on iOS, even though the browser has the event definition and handlers. Workaround is setting timeouts when a CSS transition is triggered.
  • When using both a touchscreen and mouse at the same time, double-clicking or double-tapping might or might not trigger a dblclick event, most notably on Chrome on a MS Surface (Leaflet/Leaflet#4127).

CSS

  • <select> display in IE6
  • PNG alpha transparency
  • The look of the various *-resize cursors is very different across browsers and platforms.
  • IE6 css bugs like duplicate characters bug
  • IE display transparency bug on height > 4096px
  • Generated content detection is now part of Modernizr core tests see L640
    CSS Generated Content support
  • False positives for box-shadow, border-radius, etc (happens in Aurora/Midori/etc) issue 169
  • pointer-events false positive in Opera
  • position:fixed support in iOS and Android
  • @rules prefix inconsistencies in IE/Opera requiring browser engine inferences.

Edge cases

  • IE CSS bug where certain types of positioning of an <input type=text> element can cause that element's autocomplete box to not render at the same location as the actual input box.
  • strange treatment of <!-- --> comment nodes in the DOM (in IE)... like in some cases, a comment node will be moved to be a child of the previous element even though it's not a child proper. Can cause things like :empty to fail differently.
  • resize event firing rate. e.g. you can't keep an element's position smoothly updated in response to resize or scroll.

General undetectables

  • Memory leaks
  • DOM/JS performance (e.g.: innerHTML vs. DOM manipulation)
    • Testable, but typically not feasible to test just to avoid code forking.
  • Hardware Acceleration
    • Whether a CSS transition can use (or did use) accelerated compositing. If an effect isn't going to be hardware-accelerated, then a setTimeout animation is often more performant than a non-accelerated CSS transition. No reliable way to measure the framerate of a CSS transition.

This might not be a complete list

Add to the list if you know more Undetectables. Likewise, link to possible solutions if you think an item listed here can be feature-detected.

Contributors: paulirish, jaubourg, rwaldron, zachleat, snover, devongovett, rgrove, savetheclocktower, getify, garann, jdalton, michaelbrundage, necolas, mislav, davidcalhoun, ivansanchez

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