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Comment by aantix | Hacker News Reader

I have no idea what Caniuse is.

Please clarify the title.

Can I X, is a question about the readiness/compliance of a certain thing at time = now. Can I use CSS version X was the iconic early meme.

https://caniuse.com/?search=css3

For a generalized example, if you wanted to know if the basketball courts were ready for you to “ball it up” in a certain city, it’d be caniball.com

If you want to know if you can use a certain frontend technology, the idea is like: canwefigma?

It’s a glorified feature matrix, and usually a project of a passionate community. I approve, even if some of the memes are a bit dank.

https://caniuse.com/

An overview of features that are supported in browsers

Even that page isn’t helpful.

What is it..?

From that page.. A language for in browsing testing (because of the webassembly support)? But there’s some component features, so that doesn’t appear to be the case.

I’m an avid reader of HN and this is the first time I’ve seen this tool/language/lib mentioned on the front page. So I know nothing.

How did this make it to the top? I can’t be the only one guessing.

you search a feature and it tells you what browsers support what features, such as this for CSS Grid[0] highlights which browsers support the CSS Grid specification. You can search for individual sub features as well.

[0]: https://caniuse.com/css-grid

This looks very useful. Thanks!

It is a website that you can type in some web technology such as " CookieStore API" and know at a glance which browsers support it and which browser versions.

That makes sense. Thanks for the clarification.

Caniuse is a database listing browser support for all kind of web development features, i.e. what version of what browser supports what features of HTML, CSS, Javascript.

It helps web developers to determine what language features to use in order to be compatible with the browsers most of their users use.

Thank-you. You clarified a poorly written HN title.

The Web has a lot of features, but not all of them are implemented by all browsers. The website (caniuse.com) provides you the info about which features are implemented by which browsers. So now you as a webdev can consider which features you want to use in your web apps.

Thank-you. Your clarity was appreciated.

From the "About" page (top right corner of the website that left you dumbfounded)

>"Can I use" provides up-to-date browser support tables for support of front-end web technologies on desktop and mobile web browsers.

If someone is unclear about what something does and the about page is more informative, then.. provide the link to the about page instead of the ambiguous feature page.

Do you think, after commenting for the 3rd time demanding more information about caniuse, you could just have clicked that big "About" button?

The argument was against the HN title. It simply wasn't useful.

Arguing against clearer, less ambiguous HN titles is a strange position.

Your own about page says you're an elite rails dev, it's so bizarre to see you double down about caniuse's purpose being unclear.

Agree. The web these days just assumes you know. Being detached from the internet for 10 years would probably have more drastic consequences than people realize.

familiarity with tools being assumed given the HN audience I don't think is a big issue. No issue with asking I've found if one isn't sure, usually someone will answer!

There’s a middle ground to be struck here. CanIUse is a very frequently cited web development tool, if you’re not a web developer you might not know of it and that’s absolutely fine. I don’t think every web site has to assume the user has been offline for ten years before getting to the meat of their purpose.

This is a good hint. We might want to add a better description on the site, too.

I know what caniuse is but I have no idea what a webview is. What is a webview?

A webview is an embedded browser view within a native application. As an end user, you typically encounter them during the login, "pay with credit card" and "terms of service" sections of mobile apps.

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