Mobile HTML5

Chapter 1. Setting the Stage to Learn Mobile HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript APIs

If you’re anything like me, you’ve hated older versions of Internet Explorer for years. Those browsers were full of fail. However, they failed the same way everywhere for their entire life spans.^[6] We all knew IE6 sucked, but it sucked in the same way. Once we figured out how to polyfill for IE6, we had it figured out.

In the mobile landscape, we also have failure, but we have failure in newer, more diverse, ever-changing ways. Different browser versions on different devices may support many new features, but may do so in different ways. Or, they may support a feature, but that feature may not be usable. For example, a modern device may or may not support localStorage. The devices that support localStorage may or may not allow you to write to it. Even if the browser allows you to read from localStorage, reading from it may take a long time and hinder performance. And, even if the browser generally allows you to write to it, localStorage itself may have reached the storage limit.

We can’t cover all the quirks in all the browsers for all operating systems and devices here. Even if I knew all of the quirks (and I don’t), the quirks could fill a tome, and said tome would be outdated before I finished writing it. This book is, in fact, out of date. The landscape is ever changing. There is no way to produce a book that is up to date because by the time it goes to print—or even by the time you finish a chapter—the ...