Skip to content

Commit

Permalink
impressive explanation about browser support
Browse files Browse the repository at this point in the history
  • Loading branch information
bartaz committed Jan 4, 2012
1 parent 8953f37 commit d0d67fe
Showing 1 changed file with 42 additions and 9 deletions.
51 changes: 42 additions & 9 deletions README.md
Original file line number Diff line number Diff line change
Expand Up @@ -32,31 +32,64 @@ please contact me via GitHub or send me a pull request to updated `README.md` fi
BROWSER SUPPORT
-----------------

Impress.js is developed with current webkit-based browsers in mind (Chrome,
Safari), but *should* work also in other browsers supporting CSS3 3D transforms
and transitions (Firefox, IE10).
### TL;DR;

Currently impress.js works fine in latest Chrome/Chromium browser, Safari 5.1 and Firefox 10
(to be released in January 2012). IE10 support is currently unknown, so let's assume it doesn't
work there. It also doesn't work in Opera.

As it was not developed with mobile browsers in mind, it currently doesn't work on
any mobile devices, including tablets.

### Still interested? Read more...

Additionally for the animations to run smoothly it's required to have hardware
acceleration support in your browser. This depends on the browser, your operating
system and even kind of graphic hardware you have in your machine.

It's actively developed with newest Chromium and tested in Firefox Aurora.
For browsers not supporting CSS3 3D transforms impress.js adds `impress-not-supported`
class on `#impress` element, so fallback styles can be applied to make all the content accessible.

I don't really expect it to run smoothly in non-webkit-based browser.
If it does, just let me know, I'll glad to hear that!

For browsers not supporting CSS3 3D transforms impress.js adds `impress-not-supported`
class on `#impress` element, so fallback styles can be applied.
### Even more explanation and technical stuff

Let's put this straight -- wide browser support was (and is) not on top of my priority list for
impress.js. It's built on top of fresh technologies that just start to appear in the browsers
and I'd like to rather look forward and develop for the future than being slowed down by the past.

But it's not "hard-coded" for any particular browser or engine. If any browser in future will
support features required to run impress.js, it will just begin to work there without changes in
the code.

From technical point of view all the positioning of presentation elements in 3D requires CSS 3D
transforms support. Transitions between presentation steps are based on CSS transitions.
So these two features are required by impress.js to display presentation correctly.

Unfortunately the support for CSS 3D transforms and transitions is not enough for animations to
run smoothly. If the browser doesn't support hardware acceleration or the graphic card is not
good enough the transitions will be laggy.

Additionally the code of impress.js relies on APIs proposed in HTML5 specification, including
`classList` and `dataset` APIs. If they are not available in the browser, impress.js will not work.

Fortunately, as these are JavaScript APIs there are polyfill libraries that patch older browsers
with these APIs.

For example IE10 is said to support CSS 3D transforms and transitions, but it doesn't have `classList`
not `dataset` APIs implemented at the moment. So including polyfill libraries *should* help IE10
with running impress.js.


### Mobile
### And few more details about mobile support

Mobile browsers are currently not supported. Even iOS and Android browsers that support
CSS 3D transforms are forced into fallback view at this point.

Anyway, I'm really curious to see how modern mobile devices such as iPhone or iPad can
handle such animations, so future mobile support is considered.

iOS supports `classList` and `dataset` APIs starting with version 5, so iOS 4.X and older is not
likely to be supported (without polyfill code).


LICENSE
Expand Down

0 comments on commit d0d67fe

Please sign in to comment.