HTML5 and CSS3 have come a long way, but many important features are still risky to use

HTML5 and CSS3 have come a long way, but many important features are still risky to use — that is, they aren’t supported by all browsers. So if you’re eager to take advantage of the shiny new toys available to you, you’ll need to know which elements and styles are fair game, and which will cause a catastrophic mess.

Worry no further, thanks to HTML5 Please. This site, which is a community project from the people behind HTML5 Boilerplate, Modernizr & CSS3 Please, lets developers search and browse for elements / styles by how ready they are to use. The site also helps you determine what fallbacks are required for a consistent experience in all browsers.

Co-creator Divya Manian‘s backstory on the project:

 Paul Irish and I thought it would be useful if there were a global set of recommendations that web developers could consult and tap on when they are deciding on how to use features. This was the seed for the creation of HTML5 Please.

When can I use and Modernizr do a great job in informing the users of available features and how to feature detect them. The Modernizr polyfill wikipage also does a good job of listing all the available polyfills. What we felt missing was the glue that bound all this information together, to tell the user what the best tool for the job was: either on its own, or with a polyfill or a sensible fallback.

With HTML5 Please, you can just search for a feature that you are looking to use and find out how to do so. If you think our recommendation is incorrect, you can edit the recommendation for each feature and send a pull request (like this example).

If you’ve been curious about why so many devs are raving about HTML5, here’s a way to dive in while playing it safe!

➤  HTML5 Please