If you want Modernizr to download and execute as soon as possible to prevent a FOUC, put it in the <head> From their installation guide: Drop the script tags in the <head> of your HTML. For best performance, you should have them follow after your stylesheet references. The reason we recommend placing Modernizr in the … Read more
Modernizr doesn’t detect browsers as such, it detects which feature and capability are present and this is the whole jist of what it’s trying to do. You could try hooking in a simple detection script like this and then using it to make your choice. I’ve included Version Detection as well just in case that’s … Read more
No, they’re not the same at all; they do completely different things. html5shiv allows you to use the new HTML5 tags in versions of IE that don’t understand them. Without it, IE will choke on these tags, so you need this if you intend to use the tags. Don’t expect it to make the tags … Read more
When Modernizr runs, it removes the “no-js” class and replaces it with “js”. This is a way to apply different CSS rules depending on whether or not Javascript support is enabled. See Modernizer’s source code.