Become part of the solution.
Suchi is a client-side library to help your lagging users adopt Evergreen browsers by unobtrusively presenting them with context-appropriate options for how to upgrade to a browser that won't ever need prompting again.
Suchi comes in a couple of "styles": the super-lightweight isOld.js for folks
who are rolling their own prompts, or the full-featured suchi.js for a full-
service prompt. For minified copies of both scripts, see the build/ directory.
The core of Suchi is a tiny helper function to tell you if a browser is modern
or ancient. It can be used in a stand-alone way, although is part of the larger
suchi.js outlined below as well:
<script defer src="//suchijs.org/isOld.min.js"></script>
<script defer>
if ( suchi.isOld(navigator.userAgent) ) {
// Do something about it.
}
</script>It's simple! The following snippet loads and configures suchi.js. On the 3rd
page loaded by an IE7 user of a site with this snippet, they'll see the upgrade
message.
<div id="promptId"></div>
<script>
var suchiConfig = suchiConfig || [];
suchiConfig.push({
onlagging: function() {
// Callback that's fired when Suchi detects as
}
});
(function(src) {
var se = document.createElement("script");
se.async = true;
se.src = src;
var s = document.getElementsByTagName("script")[0];
s.parentNode.insertBefore(se, s);
})("//suchijs.org/suchi.min.js");
</script>Suchi does tight-fit UA testing to determine if a user is visting your site with one of the worst-offending legacy browsers; i.e., a non- auto-updating browser with relatively high market share. Users on up-to-date Evergreen browsers will never be prompted, while users who are on dead-end browser (e.g., IE 8 for XP, Safari for Windows, or the legacy Android Browser) will be presented with choices that enable them to move to a better, auto- updating world.
Future versions will optionally present users of OSes for which there are no Evergreen options with information on how to update to a modern OS.
Yep, but that's OK. Suchi isn't trying to prompt everyone who might be sporting a legacy browser, instead it takes a more pragmatic approach, prompting only users of the worst "polluters" in our collective browser environment. Sure, there might be some classics on the roads, but our primary concern is making sure that most people are doing better than browser equivalents of a '84 Olds Cutlass Supreme; modern at the time, yes, and popular to boot -- but missing the safety, efficiency, and reliability features that are the hallmark of the ever- improving bits of today's (and tomorrow's) best browsers.
Suchi uses a cookie to determine that a user has visited a few pages on your site before ever getting in their face. This is, of course, configurable (see below), but the general idea is that Suchi isn't competing with your brand or site; it's not the primary bit of the experience you're trying to provide, but if it can do something to help improve a user's experience (by obtaining a better browser), everyone can win.
If your site requires user consent for cookies, see the configuration options below for hooks that allow you to control when and how Suchi sets cookies.
As of Spring 2013, users of the following desktop browsers are considered "left behind" and dangerous enough (in terms of market reach) to warrant a gentle nudge in the right direction:
- IE 6-9
- Firefox 3.6, 9-16
- Safari for Windows (all versions, and 5.1 in particular)
- Chrome 16-23
Mobile browsers that need the nudge are:
- iOS Safari 5.0-5.1
- Android Browser (all versions)
Aren't they sort of modern? Or at least the most modern you can get on some versions of the OSes they run on?
Perhaps in terms of absolute vintage, yes they're "modern", but the biggest determinant of how much of a pollutant a popular browser will become is how long it lives on after its replacement is released.
Said another way, when Browser X Version 18 is released, how long, on average, do we all have to wait until all the users of Version 17 are either upgraded or moved onto a competing (auto-updating) browser? How long until 90% of those users are upgraded? That is our key metric for browser progress, and recent experience shows that it's a more telling indicator of overall improvements than any other point-feature improvement.
Think about what has gone down over the past couple of years in JS performance: sure, some browsers might have been slower in one release than their competitors, but to a one they all caught up in the next release. Indeed, the only reason we can't all assume JIT'd JS performance as our baseline today is because the replacement rates amongst some of those browsers has been incredibly low. Their latest versions might be great, but it's not helping us, practically speaking.
So back to those browsers...why are some relatively modern browsers getting prompted? Because they're dead-browsers-walking. They've been replaced, they just don't know it yet. Suchi is here to help speed their journey from "legacy" to "museum piece", recommending browsers that auto-update so those users will never be left-behind again.
Yes, yes you did. Aka: "UA sniffing". But it's not what you think it is, for two reasons:
- The goal isn't to find out "can I use a feature based on some correlation with UA string?", it's "is this a browser that is left-behind?". Using UA detection to determien feature support is fraught because it tests something other than the actual presenece or abscense of the features themselves. But we're not doing that; instead, Suchi is trying to figure out if the browser claims to be one of the worst-offending legacy browsers. If it does, we prompt. If not...well...nothing, actually. Sites can't "break" due to this testing because there's little or no chance of a browser wanting to lie about this.
- This isn't your older brother's UA sniffing. No shonky
indexOfhere. Isntead, Suchi uses tight-fitting regexes that "shrink wrap" around matching UA strings, meaning that slight variations and "liar" UAs don't match. This is a good thing, since the failure scenario we're worried about is prompting users who are on good browsers, not incorrectly prompting users who are on legacy browsers. The matching is written in such a way as to ensure that unknown or unanticipated browsers don't trigger a prompt, so when Chrome 54 and IE 18 are releases, you can rest easy that your un-maintained sites that still include Suchi won't be caught off- guard, suddenly spamming your best users with upgrade information.
<div id="promptId"></div>
<script>
var suchiConfig = suchiConfig || [];
suchiConfig.push({
//
// Basic configuration
//
// NOTIMPLEMENTED
treatGCFAsLagging: true, // Detect IE with GCF installed as lagging
// NOTIMPLEMENTED
onlagging: function() {
// Callback that's fired when Suchi finds the current browser is wanting
},
// NOTIMPLEMENTED
onload: function() {
// Called when suchi.js loads and finishes processing options.
},
//
// Prompt configuration
//
// NOTIMPLEMENTED
// By default, only the detection script is loaded, not the resources needed
// to prompt. Set this to true to load localized prompt UI.
prompt: true,
// NOTIMPLEMENTED
// Localized prompt languages to use in order of preference.
promptLocales: ["en-GB", "en-US", "en" /*...*/ ],
// NOTIMPLEMENTED
promptAt: "promptId", // id of the element to put the prompt in
// NOTIMPLEMENTED
allowCookies: false,
// NOTIMPLEMENTED
pageviewsTillPrompt: 0, // Always prompt
// NOTIMPLEMENTED
rePromptDelay: 4 // Days to wait before re-prompting after dismissal
});
// Asynchronously load suchi.js
(function(src) {
var se = document.createElement("script");
se.async = true;
se.src = src;
var s = document.getElementsByTagName("script")[0];
s.parentNode.insertBefore(se, s);
})(
// If using a custom build or your own CDN, replace this with the location
// of your copy of suchi.js
"//suchijs.org/suchi.js"
);
</script>