Modernizr

As you've undoubtedly noticed, it's been relatively quiet on the Modernizr front from our side, with no news or new releases since the start of the year. Nonetheless, everyone else has started getting more and more busy using Modernizr to enhance ... [More] their sites without sacrificing control over older browsers. Progressive Enhancement is becoming increasingly commonplace and we couldn't be more excited about that. So where do things stand? Well, we've been working, over on Github, at getting the next release of Modernizr ready, version 1.2. We're not quite there yet, but we are setting a planned release date of Thursday, April 22. Every time we're almost there another new feature or issue pops up that we have a hard time excluding from the next release, but it's more important to iterate regularly than do big pushes for a tool like this. Related to all this has been an increasing effort towards realigning Modernizr; the site isn't what it could and should be, the community around Modernizr isn't as cohesive yet which leads to fragmented and overlapping efforts in promoting the tool, and the explanation of what Modernizr is and how it works is still lacking. Clearly, lots of room for improvement—and we're not just aware of it, we're working to fix it. One of the biggest issues of the current site is the static-ness of it. For instance, we really want to promote sites that use Modernizr, but there's no easy way to submit your site to us. This and many other things will be addressed in the redesign. The absolute biggest announcement is saved for last, and that is: Modernizr 2. Early on, before Modernizr was released yet, my friend Mike Krieger and I were brainstorming on how to offer Modernizr. Initially, my plan had been to offer some configuration tool wherewith you could specify which features you wanted to test for, and download a customized build of Modernizr that suited your needs. Mikey and I got all excited by the possibilities of tracking this data, observing which features web designers & developers were most interested in, and so forth. Then we realized that this brought about a ton of complexity, far too much for the introduction of the library. So, we dropped that idea and instead focused on making a simple, easy to use toolkit without any complexity in how to get it: just download it, include it and you're set. Well, turns out that the idea itself wasn't a bad one, it was just too ahead of its time. As the Modernizr library grew its feature-set, it also grew its footprint and execution time. Thanks to the talents of Paul and the many contributors committing code over on Github, it has stayed incredibly lean and fast—but also at the cost of things we'd really like to add, like SVG. SVG is an oft-requested feature for Modernizr to test against, and we really want to add it. But, to do it right would involve doing not just a basic one-line test against something like "window.SVG"—no, you have to do a very large number of tests so you can accurately report what parts of SVG the browser supports. To add that to Modernizr right now would bloat the library and slow it down, even though most users won't make use of it. With Modernizr 2 we'll be breaking things up a little and allow you to customize your download if you so choose to. There will still be one simple, default download containing the core features of the library, but for advanced users there will be a configuration tool so you can pick and choose and add (or subtract) all the features you want. So those are some of the updates on Modernizr. Next week Thursday we hope to release version 1.2 so if all goes well, you'll hear from us again soon. [Less]

As you've undoubtedly noticed, it's been relatively quiet on the Modernizr front from our side, with no news or new releases since the start of the year. Nonetheless, everyone else has started getting more and more busy using Modernizr to enhance ... [More] their sites without sacrificing control over older browsers. Progressive Enhancement is becoming increasingly commonplace and we couldn't be more excited about that. So where do things stand? Well, we've been working, over on Github, at getting the next release of Modernizr ready, version 1.2. We're not quite there yet, but we are setting a planned release date of Thursday, April 22. Every time we're almost there another new feature or issue pops up that we have a hard time excluding from the next release, but it's more important to iterate regularly than do big pushes for a tool like this. Related to all this has been an increasing effort towards realigning Modernizr; the site isn't what it could and should be, the community around Modernizr isn't as cohesive yet which leads to fragmented and overlapping efforts in promoting the tool, and the explanation of what Modernizr is and how it works is still lacking. Clearly, lots of room for improvement—and we're not just aware of it, we're working to fix it. One of the biggest issues of the current site is the static-ness of it. For instance, we really want to promote sites that use Modernizr, but there's no easy way to submit your site to us. This and many other things will be addressed in the redesign. The absolute biggest announcement is saved for last, and that is: Modernizr 2. Early on, before Modernizr was released yet, my friend Mike Krieger and I were brainstorming on how to offer Modernizr. Initially, my plan had been to offer some configuration tool wherewith you could specify which features you wanted to test for, and download a customized build of Modernizr that suited your needs. Mikey and I got all excited by the possibilities of tracking this data, observing which features web designers & developers were most interested in, and so forth. Then we realized that this brought about a ton of complexity, far too much for the introduction of the library. So, we dropped that idea and instead focused on making a simple, easy to use toolkit without any complexity in how to get it: just download it, include it and you're set. Well, turns out that the idea itself wasn't a bad one, it was just too ahead of its time. As the Modernizr library grew its feature-set, it also grew its footprint and execution time. Thanks to the talents of Paul and the many contributors committing code over on Github, it has stayed incredibly lean and fast—but also at the cost of things we'd really like to add, like SVG. SVG is an oft-requested feature for Modernizr to test against, and we really want to add it. But, to do it right would involve doing not just a basic one-line test against something like "window.SVG"—no, you have to do a very large number of tests so you can accurately report what parts of SVG the browser supports. To add that to Modernizr right now would bloat the library and slow it down, even though most users won't make use of it. With Modernizr 2 we'll be breaking things up a little and allow you to customize your download if you so choose to. There will still be one simple, default download containing the core features of the library, but for advanced users there will be a configuration tool so you can pick and choose and add (or subtract) all the features you want. So those are some of the updates on Modernizr. Next week Thursday we hope to release version 1.2 so if all goes well, you'll hear from us again soon. [Less]

Since we launched with the first public release of Modernizr on July 1st of last year, we have seen some exciting things happen. The library itself has gone from a humble 0.9 beta to a rock solid 1.1 release, almost doubling the amount of features ... [More] detected whilst maintaining a small codebase and a lean, fast execution of the script. These developments have not gone unnoticed: searching the Web for "Modernizr" in June of last year produced only a couple dozen results, all from people misspelling "modernizer"; today, there are over 56,000 pages on the Web talking about it. Mark Pilgrim's upcoming book, Dive Into HTML5, discusses Modernizr in great depth, and the CSS Cookbook, 3rd Edition features it as well. The Modernizr.com website itself didn't sit still either; we welcomed well over 90,000 visitors, expanded with Documentation and News areas, endured two Google AppEngine downtimes and got some great feedback on how to better present and explain Modernizr to new visitors. Of those 90K+ visitors, we have some interesting browser statistics to share with you: Firefox is still the web browser of choice for developers, accounting for 49% of all our visitors; Safari comes second with 30%; not a huge surprise as more and more web designers and developers switch to the Mac, and Safari's built-in Web Inspector is a handy alternative to several Firefox plugins for debugging websites with; Chrome is picking up momentum as well, guiding almost 9% of our visitors, leaving… …Internet Explorer and Opera to battle for the remainder, together with a hodgepodge of miscellaneous browsers and browser versions. On the Operating System's side, we see the Mac platform edging out Windows just barely: 46.8% versus 46.5%. The various Linux flavors accounted for about 6% of visitors. Looking at our screen resolutions data, I was amused and intrigued: its pie chart for Modernizr.com's visitors looks like a Trivial Pursuit logo, with almost equal shares for 1440x900, 1680x1050, 1920x1200, 1280x800, 1280x1024, with the last slice made up of all the remaining resolutions. Clearly there is no overly-dominant single resolution among web designers, but it's good to know the vast majority of our visitors has at least 1280 horizontal pixels available. Looking ahead to 2010, we hope you'll continue to enjoy using Modernizr and perhaps even contribute to make this JavaScript library more versatile and useful as a tool for cutting-edge web developers. — Faruk Ateş and Paul Irish [Less]

Since we launched with the first public release of Modernizr on July 1st of last year, we have seen some exciting things happen. The library itself has gone from a humble 0.9 beta to a rock solid 1.1 release, almost doubling the amount of features ... [More] detected whilst maintaining a small codebase and a lean, fast execution of the script. These developments have not gone unnoticed: searching the Web for "Modernizr" in June of last year produced only a couple dozen results, all from people misspelling "modernizer"; today, there are over 56,000 pages on the Web talking about it. Mark Pilgrim's upcoming book, Dive Into HTML5, discusses Modernizr in great depth, and the CSS Cookbook, 3rd Edition features it as well. The Modernizr.com website itself didn't sit still either; we welcomed well over 90,000 visitors, expanded with Documentation and News areas, endured two Google AppEngine downtimes and got some great feedback on how to better present and explain Modernizr to new visitors. Of those 90K+ visitors, we have some interesting browser statistics to share with you: Firefox is still the web browser of choice for developers, accounting for 49% of all our visitors; Safari comes second with 30%; not a huge surprise as more and more web designers and developers switch to the Mac, and Safari's built-in Web Inspector is a handy alternative to several Firefox plugins for debugging websites with; Chrome is picking up momentum as well, guiding almost 9% of our visitors, leaving… …Internet Explorer and Opera to battle for the remainder, together with a hodgepodge of miscellaneous browsers and browser versions. On the Operating System's side, we see the Mac platform edging out Windows just barely: 46.8% versus 46.5%. The various Linux flavors accounted for about 6% of visitors. Looking at our screen resolutions data, I was amused and intrigued: its pie chart for Modernizr.com's visitors looks like a Trivial Pursuit logo, with almost equal shares for 1440x900, 1680x1050, 1920x1200, 1280x800, 1280x1024, with the last slice made up of all the remaining resolutions. Clearly there is no overly-dominant single resolution among web designers, but it's good to know the vast majority of our visitors has at least 1280 horizontal pixels available. Looking ahead to 2010, we hope you'll continue to enjoy using Modernizr and perhaps even contribute to make this JavaScript library more versatile and useful as a tool for cutting-edge web developers. — Faruk Ateş and Paul Irish [Less]

We’re delighted to bring you Modernizr 1.1, a handy upgrade to the increasingly popular HTML5 and CSS3 detection toolkit. Now that Modernizr is on Github we’re seeing contributions come in for additional features from many different people. We want ... [More] to express special thanks to Remy Sharp, Mike Taylor, Jan Lehnardt, Fearphage and Ms2ger for their work pushing Modernizr forward.  All of us who work on and contribute to Modernizr feel that it is the best way to start taking advantage of HTML5 and CSS3 in your websites today, which is why this new release covers even more ground of both specifications. We’re heading towards supporting absolutely everything from the next generation of web technologies that is being implemented by any of the major browsers today, so that you as a developer know what you can and can’t expect from your visitors’ browser. New in this release is detection for: localStorage sessionStorage Web Workers applicationCache All new HTML5 input properties HTML5 Audio and Video formats (supported codecs) We also support CSS Gradients the way Firefox/Mozilla have them implemented (linear-gradient(…) and radial-gradient(…) ). We still support Safari’s syntax (gradient(linear|radial, …), and use the same “cssgradients” property on the Modernizr object for it. That means you’ll be responsible for covering both Firefox and Safari’s CSS syntax if you take advantage of this feature and are working with fallbacks for the other browsers. If all of that still isn’t enough for you, Modernizr now features a simple plugin architecture so that you can add your own detection tests. To use the new addTest() method, please refer to the updated Documentation. There is a lot more planned for Modernizr and this 1.1 release lays some of the ground work to reach that goal. We hope you enjoy this release and have a great month ringing out an exciting 2009. — Team Modernizr [Less]

We’re delighted to bring you Modernizr 1.1, a handy upgrade to the increasingly popular HTML5 and CSS3 detection toolkit. Now that Modernizr is on Github we’re seeing contributions come in for additional features from many different people. We want ... [More] to express special thanks to Remy Sharp, Mike Taylor, Jan Lehnardt, Fearphage and Ms2ger for their work pushing Modernizr forward.  All of us who work on and contribute to Modernizr feel that it is the best way to start taking advantage of HTML5 and CSS3 in your websites today, which is why this new release covers even more ground of both specifications. We’re heading towards supporting absolutely everything from the next generation of web technologies that is being implemented by any of the major browsers today, so that you as a developer know what you can and can’t expect from your visitors’ browser. New in this release is detection for: localStorage sessionStorage Web Workers applicationCache All new HTML5 input properties HTML5 Audio and Video formats (supported codecs) We also support CSS Gradients the way Firefox/Mozilla have them implemented (linear-gradient(…) and radial-gradient(…) ). We still support Safari’s syntax (gradient(linear|radial, …), and use the same “cssgradients” property on the Modernizr object for it. That means you’ll be responsible for covering both Firefox and Safari’s CSS syntax if you take advantage of this feature and are working with fallbacks for the other browsers. If all of that still isn’t enough for you, Modernizr now features a simple plugin architecture so that you can add your own detection tests. To use the new addTest() method, please refer to the updated Documentation. There is a lot more planned for Modernizr and this 1.1 release lays some of the ground work to reach that goal. We hope you enjoy this release and have a great month ringing out an exciting 2009. — Team Modernizr [Less]

A couple of quick update for you today. First, Modernizr is featured heavily in Mark Pilgrim's upcoming Dive Into HTML5, which is being written and published online and will be available in book form upon completion. To get such prominent placement ... [More] in one of Pilgrim's books is an honor, to say the least, but it especially strengthens our belief that progressive feature detection—which is what Modernizr does—is the best approach to web development today. Second, we've added a site to the gallery: FindMeByIP.com uses Modernizr to tell you more than just your IP; it tells you what your browser is capable of. It's a beautiful design and we're excited to see Modernizr being used on it. Lastly, there has been some feedback that the front page of Modernizr doesn't convey the value, purpose and benefits of the toolkit very well. These concerns have been taken into consideration and work is underway to change that. We definitely acknowledge that the real value of Modernizr isn't directly apparent, so we're planning to fix that. More on that hopefully soon. [Less]

A couple of quick update for you today. First, Modernizr is featured heavily in Mark Pilgrim's upcoming Dive Into HTML5, which is being written and published online and will be available in book form upon completion. To get such prominent placement ... [More] in one of Pilgrim's books is an honor, to say the least, but it especially strengthens our belief that progressive feature detection—which is what Modernizr does—is the best approach to web development today. Second, we've added a site to the gallery: FindMeByIP.com uses Modernizr to tell you more than just your IP; it tells you what your browser is capable of. It's a beautiful design and we're excited to see Modernizr being used on it. Lastly, there has been some feedback that the front page of Modernizr doesn't convey the value, purpose and benefits of the toolkit very well. These concerns have been taken into consideration and work is underway to change that. We definitely acknowledge that the real value of Modernizr isn't directly apparent, so we're planning to fix that. More on that hopefully soon. [Less]

Just a quick announcement that Modernizr is now available on Github. Hack away!

Just a quick announcement that Modernizr is now available on Github. Hack away!