Provide platform detection for Help Center website

[juliandoucette]

Background

• The new Help Center website relies on platform detection to display platform specific directions
• We have decided to include all platforms on a single page and show/hide platforms based on a classname injected into the HTML body element

What to change

• adblockplus/cms or infrastructure must provide a means of implementing and testing platform detection for website development and deployment

[kvas]

Do I understand it correctly that for the time being we're planning to go with client-side platform detection using JavaScript and that if we might need a server side solution it would be further in the future (1-2 years)?
If that is the case, I would say that by that time we (Operations) expect to have a solution for deploying static websites together with their related dynamic content in a way that all of this can be controlled by the website authors. This would make this issue not applicable in its current form, so perhaps we can close it.
Does this sound about right or does anyone have a different understanding?

[juliandoucette]

Do I understand it correctly that for the time being we're planning to go with client-side platform detection using JavaScript and that if we might need a server side solution it would be further in the future (1-2 years)?

The properties that we can use to detect the browser in JavaScript are depricated and may be removed by any major browser at any time.

We (Manvel and I) said that we are comfortable implementing a JavaScript solution temporarily if sitescripts/operations commits to developing a server side solution that will replace our JavaScript solution by the time we implement the next website that requires browser detection (probably in the next 1 or 2 quarters).

[kvas]

I see, so I got the timing wrong. Perhaps in this case it makes sense to keep this issue and rewrite it into a more generic way that's not tied to Help Center capturing the timeline as well. Would it be ok if I do this?

[juliandoucette]

Would it be ok if I do this?

Yes.

[juliandoucette]

On second thought, I don't think that this is necessary anymore. I think that it's very unlikely that we will not be able to implement proper detection on the client side or gracefully degrade in the few edge cases when we fail to detect browsers properly in the future.