844154 - Warn user when a demo only works in a certain browser

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(developer.mozilla.org Graveyard :: Demo Studio / Dev Derby, enhancement)

Description

[John Karahalis [:openjck]]

What problems would this solve?
===============================
The goal of the Demo Studio is to highlight what is possible with the open web. However, some demo authors only support a limited set of browsers. For example, the following entry only works in WebKit.

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/demos/detail/shuriken-only-one-div-works-only-in-webkit

We should slap a warning on browser-specific demos like these, to notify the user and discourage the author.

Who would use this?
===================
This would be used by both Demo Studio viewers and Demo Studio contributors.

What would users see?
=====================
A big fat warning on the Demo Landing page that calls out that the demo only works in a particular browser.

What would users do? What would happen as a result?
===================================================
A Demo Studio visitor would see this and do one of two things: open the required browser to launch the demo or proceed without launching the demo at all. Either way, the visitor would not be confused if the demo does not work correctly on his browser.

A Demo Studio author would see this warning and either live with the shame or update his demo to support multiple browsers correctly.

Is there anything else we should know?
======================================
The mechanism for catching demos like these is up for discussion. Maybe we could have visitors flag browser-specific demos. Maybe the demo author could indicate which browsers the demo supports when submitting it.

Comment 1

[karabajic]

Include Modernizr. Modernizr is a JavaScript library that detects HTML5 and CSS3 features in the user’s browser.

http://modernizr.com/
HTML5 Cross Browser Polyfills - https://github.com/Modernizr/Modernizr/wiki/HTML5-Cross-Browser-Polyfills

Also HTML5 Shiv - defacto way to enable use of HTML5 sectioning elements in legacy Internet Explore

https://github.com/aFarkas/html5shiv/

and Yepnope - an asynchronous conditional resource loader

http://yepnopejs.com/

Comment 2

[ali spivak]

Demo Studio is being removed from MDN and archived as of end January 2016