I think it would be better not to expose the API at all if it isn't supported. Web apps might use the API's presence to adjust the UI. It would create a poor user experience if the UI appears but the functionality fails. Throwing an error on open makes feature detection almost impossible.
Xidorn Quan [email protected] www.canva.com [image: Company logo] in <https://www.linkedin.com/company/canva> ig <https://instagram.com/canva> x <https://x.com/canva> On Fri, Oct 16, 2026, 6:59 AM Joey Arhar <[email protected]> wrote: > > That's a little surprising. > > Do you think it would be better if it didn't throw an error? That seems > more obvious to the author what is happening compared to returning a fake > value or something. > > > Do you have any published developer guidance (feature detection? > try/catch?) to avoid foot guns? > > It looks like the MDN article already has a catch in its example code: > https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/EyeDropper#examples > > It doesn't explain that this catch will be hit in this scenario with older > versions of android though, so I filed an issue here: > https://github.com/mdn/content/issues/46163 > > On Thu, Oct 15, 2026 at 9:17 AM Mike Taylor <[email protected]> > wrote: > >> That's a little surprising. Do you have any published developer guidance >> (feature detection? try/catch?) to avoid foot guns? >> On 10/14/26 7:38 p.m., Joey Arhar wrote: >> >> In previous versions of android, the API will throw an error. >> >> On Tue, Oct 13, 2026 at 4:18 PM PhistucK <[email protected]> wrote: >> >>> What will previous versions of Android experience? An unexposed API? >>> >>> >>> ☆*PhistucK* >>> >>> >>> On Tue, Oct 13, 2026 at 6:52 PM Joey Arhar <[email protected]> wrote: >>> >>>> I am enabling this on Android in M158 because the latest version of >>>> Android now has a native eyedropper API that we can hook into. >>>> I will follow up on feedback and alternative proposals for this API. >>>> >>>> On Thu, Sep 23, 2021 at 5:13 AM Anne van Kesteren <[email protected]> >>>> wrote: >>>> >>>>> On Fri, Aug 13, 2021 at 7:04 PM 'Ionel Popescu' via blink-dev >>>>> <[email protected]> wrote: >>>>> > https://wicg.github.io/eyedropper-api/ >>>>> >>>>> It seems some security issues were opened against this document post >>>>> LGTMs. And after these issues were raised there hasn't been a lot of >>>>> activity on the repository which makes me wonder what is going on. >>>>> Does anyone know? >>>>> >>>>> -- >>>>> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google >>>>> Groups "blink-dev" group. >>>>> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send >>>>> an email to [email protected]. >>>>> To view this discussion on the web visit >>>>> https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/d/msgid/blink-dev/CADnb78jYKAh8%3Dpe859_PubwcBOoWW%2BHdQDJ8jcJmbOYeotodRg%40mail.gmail.com >>>>> . >>>>> >>>> -- >>>> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google >>>> Groups "blink-dev" group. >>>> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send >>>> an email to [email protected]. >>>> To view this discussion visit >>>> https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/d/msgid/blink-dev/CAK6btwKBNe13UR6d8y9Ygc%2BmP8-dTsn-hK2LrgmSQJ89HPUGOA%40mail.gmail.com >>>> <https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/d/msgid/blink-dev/CAK6btwKBNe13UR6d8y9Ygc%2BmP8-dTsn-hK2LrgmSQJ89HPUGOA%40mail.gmail.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer> >>>> . >>>> >>> -- >> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups >> "blink-dev" group. >> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an >> email to [email protected]. >> To view this discussion visit >> https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/d/msgid/blink-dev/CAK6btwKZCPE0mp3HUPsFLgxRkkwgYY8TiRpeyZLPNVbVGuGgaw%40mail.gmail.com >> <https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/d/msgid/blink-dev/CAK6btwKZCPE0mp3HUPsFLgxRkkwgYY8TiRpeyZLPNVbVGuGgaw%40mail.gmail.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer> >> . >> >> -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to a topic in the > Google Groups "blink-dev" group. > To unsubscribe from this topic, visit > https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/d/topic/blink-dev/rdniQ0D5UfY/unsubscribe > . > To unsubscribe from this group and all its topics, send an email to > [email protected]. > To view this discussion visit > https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/d/msgid/blink-dev/CAK6btwLdBYjFJ6CL_2QSR5EB3M5muHn76XNo-%2BbAtMVN9EFQjQ%40mail.gmail.com > <https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/d/msgid/blink-dev/CAK6btwLdBYjFJ6CL_2QSR5EB3M5muHn76XNo-%2BbAtMVN9EFQjQ%40mail.gmail.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer> > . > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "blink-dev" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/d/msgid/blink-dev/CAHhpyC9VUVAOR3Jr0RbdNcFWzZLf-v2HeiM%3DaAa9L_CVGTAWdg%40mail.gmail.com.
