Can I determine HTML5 support in my users’ browser

Question

Is Google Analytics capable of detecting a visiting browser’s level of HTML5 support? I'd like to know what percentage of my visitors browsers are HTML5-ready. Currently the only way of getting this data is to analyse the visitors' browser stats and then try to find support information on each of the browsers own help pages. As you can imagine this is somewhat time consuming and frustrating.

If support for HTML5 tags is high then it will strengthen my case to start migrating to HTML5 semantics - my 'superiors' either don't understand what it is or fear it is witchcraft.

Answer 1

If you read this example code, you can use your own javascript to detect whatever client-side features you want (any specific HTML5 feature), set a custom variable in Google Analytics and then track that from your Google Analytics reports.

Based on the wording of your question, you should realize a couple of things. First, HTML5 is not a winner-take-all thing. It's not there or not there. It's a collection of hundreds of features and different browsers have implemented some of many of those. For example, IE9 has implemented some major HTML5 features, but not implemented others (like CSS3 transitions). So, using the above technique, you would need to figure out which specific HTML5 features you wanted to track, devise a feature test for that feature (the article suggests using modernizr for the feature test since many tests are already built-in) and then record that result to a GA custom variable.

Secondly, most applications that use HTML5 use it as an improvement in the user experience (when available) and will still work with some other mechanism when the HTML5 feature is not available. This allows one to continue to support viewers using older browsers (such as Firefox 3.x, IE, etc...). So, usually you shouldn't really be thinking about all or nothing on HTML5.

If you're waiting for 99% of your viewers to have all the HTML5 features you might ever want to use in their browser, you will wait a long time. But, if you want to start offering a better user experience now to those users who have the desired HTML5 features while still offering a reasonable user experience to those who don't, then you can start using those new HTML5 features now.

As for convincing management, the idea of an improved user experience for those that have the desired HTML5 capability while still continuing to support all the other browsers with the "old" way of doing things is a low risk concept as long as you can show that at least some reasonable percentage of your viewers will benefit from the new improvement.

P.S. I also found another article on the subject of tracking HTML5 in GA.