Feature Detection and Future-friendly Development

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Stop relying on nosey servers. Start relying on honest browsers.

In an ever-increasing world of web browsers and mobile devices, how can we possibly keep track of all the front-end functionality on a website? It's not enough to degrade gracefully; we must be future-friendly. Come to this session to learn about feature detection. It's the only way to cut through this confusion and maintain a sane developer experience while actually improving user experience.

In this session we will discuss:

  • Why you should rarely use user-agent detection ever again!
  • Serving the same content and markup to all users, while providing vastly different experiences.
  • Using client-side feature detection via Modernizr.
  • Why detection should be done on the browser, and the drawbacks of making assumptions on the server.
  • Reducing bandwidth by loading CSS/JS based on feature detection.
  • How much more awesome this will be in Drupal 8.

Speakers

Room: 
Track: 
Coding and development
Experience level: 
Intermediate
Questions answered by this session: 
How can I deliver an appropriate user experience to all types of devices?
Why should I serve the same markup to everyone?
Isn't it more efficient to create different themes?
Can't we store device context on the server? Or detect mobile capabilities on the Drupal side?
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