FeatureMatrix

This is a work in progress!

The repo and documentation are still a work in progress and aren't at version 1 yet. We'll improve this over time.

What is FeatureMatrix?

FeatureMatrix is a JavaScript library for rendering feature support matrices that look like this:

(TODO: put a screenshot here)

Rather than having to explicitly define the browsers that are supported by particular features, FeatureMatrix dynamically queries the caniuse dataset to determine what browsers are supported. Features can:

• Require support for web standards
• Require the prescence of the Flash Player
• Blacklist browsers
• Whitelist browsers

Blacklisting/whitelisting is provided as a fallback for cases where there's no alternative (for example, if a browser is marked as supporting the web standards you require but there's a bug that's breaking things).

Getting FeatureMatrix

FeatureMatrix is available on npm as feature-matrix.

Usage

In your requirements file:

{
    "features": {
        "a-feature": {
            "humanReadableName": "An Amazing Feature",
            "requiredBrowserFeatures": [
                "caniuse:svg",
                "caniuse:webgl"
            ]
        },
        "another-feature": {
            "humanReadableName": "A Legacy Feature",
            "requiredBrowserPlugins": [
                "Flash 9+"
            ],
            "blacklist": [
                "IE 6-7"
            ]
        }
    }
}

In your JS:

// 'path/to/requirements.json' could also be an Object containing the requirements
FeatureMatrix.loadRequirements('path/to/requirements.json', function (err, reqs) {
    if (err) {
        handleError(err);
    } else {
        var fm = new FeatureMatrix('#mountpoint', reqs);
    }
});

Customising strings

All strings (including those used to indicate success/failure) can be changed using an options argument to the FeatureMatrix constructor. The plugin requirement text is configured using a function that returns the requirement string for that plugin to provide maximum flexibility.

FeatureMatrix.loadRequirements('path/to/requirements.json', function (err, reqs) {
    // TODO: you should add error checking here
    var fm = new FeatureMatrix('#mountpoint', reqs, {
        supportedText: 'yes',
        unsupportedText: 'no',
        unknownText: '???',
        featureColumnLabel: 'Capability',

        // this is a lot nicer if you have ES6 arrow functions and template strings
        pluginRequirementGenerator: function (plugin, version) {
            return 'Requires the installation of ' + plugin + ' ' + version;
        }
    });
});