Question

The following code alerts ls exist in IE7:

if(window.localStorage) {
    alert('ls exists');
} else {
    alert('ls does not exist');
}

IE7 doesn’t really support local storage but this still alerts it does. Perhaps this is because I am using IE9 in IE7 browser and document modes using the IE9 developer tool. Or maybe this is just the wrong way to test if LS is supported. What is the right way?

Also I don’t want to use Modernizr since I am using only a few HTML5 features and loading a large script isn’t worth it just to detect support for those few things.

Answer 1

You don’t have to use modernizr, but you can use their method to detect if localStorage is supported

modernizr at github
test for localStorage

// In FF4, if disabled, window.localStorage should === null.

// Normally, we could not test that directly and need to do a
//   `('localStorage' in window) && ` test first because otherwise Firefox will
//   throw bugzil.la/365772 if cookies are disabled

// Also in iOS5 & Safari Private Browsing mode, attempting to use localStorage.setItem
// will throw the exception:
//   QUOTA_EXCEEDED_ERRROR DOM Exception 22.
// Peculiarly, getItem and removeItem calls do not throw.

// Because we are forced to try/catch this, we'll go aggressive.

// Just FWIW: IE8 Compat mode supports these features completely:
//   www.quirksmode.org/dom/html5.html
// But IE8 doesn't support either with local files

Modernizr.addTest('localstorage', function() {
    var mod = 'modernizr';
    try {
        localStorage.setItem(mod, mod);
        localStorage.removeItem(mod);
        return true;
    } catch(e) {
        return false;
    }
});

updated with current source code