Who Supports Supports?
I was wondering who supports the css feature support query. Let's find out.
It has often been said that if you want to use a particular bit of modern CSS, you might want to use the @supports feature query. But... Which browsers support that?
We can start with the caniuse page.
Based on their data, we are currently at Global 97.77% support for supports. So we are most definitely good to use it right now.
The same data indicates that the big 5 browsers all supported support in mid-2015. Therefore, even 9 year old tech has a pretty strong chance of being fine.
It also seems that a swathe of mobile specific browsers also adopted support for @supports this year. Those browsers seemed to total a fairly small percentage of users, but we know that might still mean thousands of real people depending on your sites traffic.
The reason this all tickled my interest is the concept that you might be testing if you can use a specific css feature with @supports, when the feature itself gained full browser support before @supports did.
Interestingly the mdn article on @supports has an example checking for display: flex. However, the canisuse page on flex seems to suggest browsers had mostly implemented flex by 2014. Wild!
So... Perhaps when you use @supports you might want to consider that supports might have less support than the feature you're checking for.
Thinking about "who supports the supports rule" reminds me of a phrase from the Discworld - City Watch / Sam Vimes series:
Lord Vetinari plunked the axe again. “Tell me, Sir Samuel, do you know the phrase ‘Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?’?”
It was an expression Carrot had occasionally used, but Vimes was not in the mood to admit anything. “Can’t say that I do, sir,” he said. “Something about trifle, is it?”
“It means ‘Who guards the guards themselves?’ Sir Samuel.”
“Ah.”
“Well?”
“Sir?”
“Who watches the Watch? I wonder?”
“Oh, that’s easy, sir. We watch one another.”
— Feet Of Clay (Discworld 19) - Terry Pratchett
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes, er, qui custodes custodient? Was that right for “Who watches the watcher that watches the watchmen”? Probably not.
And...
Who watches the watchmen? he asked himself. Me!
— Thud (Discworld 34) - Terry Pratchett