How to check if character isn't supported by the user's browser in JavaScript?

Question

I'm building a site that uses a lot of emojis. Kind of like the one's you're used to seeing when texting, or on Instagram, Facebook, etc.

Examples:

Of course, not all of the emojis are supported by all the browsers out there. When they aren't then they show up as a square with a question mark in the middle like so:

Is there anyway in JavaScript that you can tell if a character is supported by the browser, or if it'll show up like the question mark above?

Browsers do not "support" unicode characters, it's the font that is responsible. — Derek 朕會功夫, Jan 23 '16 at 22:56
Check http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4635683/detect-browser-character-support-in-javascript — XPRO, Jan 23 '16 at 23:07

Derek 朕會功夫 · Accepted Answer · 2016-01-23T23:24:39.187

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Browsers do not "support" displaying unicode characters, it's the font that is responsible. Of course, you can always directly include the font that you want to use to display the characters in the emoji section in Unicode with CSS.

Here is a free and open font that can display emojis.

In case you want to detect if a font exists, here is a tool for that.

edited Jan 23 '16 at 23:24

answered Jan 23 '16 at 22:59

Derek 朕會功夫

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Thanks for linking this font. I'll try it out. – arjabbar Jan 24 '16 at 01:56
Not strictly true: the underlying OS has to support the Unicode standard also. See https://askubuntu.com/questions/736472/where-can-i-find-the-unicode-emoticon-set The system needs to know how to work with modifiers. – Ken Sharp Feb 13 '18 at 13:27
@KenSharp Well those are modifiers and not really the base emoji character. – Derek 朕會功夫 Feb 13 '18 at 14:10
Seen as the OP was talking about emoji (emoticons) then the modifiers are very relevant. – Ken Sharp Feb 14 '18 at 20:21
True. I might have to modify my answer. – Derek 朕會功夫 Feb 14 '18 at 21:30

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Jan 23 '16 at 23:04

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As others have noted.. It's not the browser but the font.. So specify a font that supports all your emojis

answered Jan 23 '16 at 23:04

Alex Hong

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How to check if character isn't supported by the user's browser in JavaScript?

2 Answers2