Topic on Talk:Compatibility

Now that we've entered 2012 I'd like to update Compatibility#Browser with what we've basically been doing the last year already.

Instead of:

• Internet Explorer 6+
• Firefox 2.0+
• Safari 3 (WebKit 525)+
• Opera 10.0+
• Chrome 5.0+

New proposed browser support:

• Internet Explorer 6+
• Firefox 3.0+
• Safari 4 (WebKit 531)+
• Opera 10.0+
• Chrome 13.0+

We could go further and raise Firefox to 3.6 and Chrome to 15. However so far everything we've done happened to work during testing in those, so we might as well keep those in the compatibility until we have to do otherwise.

If there's no problem in keeping compatibility with them, I'd continue supporting them, until dropping provides a clear benefit.

Updating the document isn't going to break anything. I'm simply proposing to make it reflect, what afaik is, the status quo.

If most or all features work in those browsers, that's great. But that's not the same as being officially supported. It's not like things will be forced to break in those browsers, simply no systematic testing. Frontend features aren't been systematically been tested in Firefox 2, Safari 3 or older versions of Chrome right now, and haven't been in a long while.

It's not like people using browsers not matching this will get warnings of anything, nothing changes. Other than bugs reported for those browsers perhaps getting a lower priority, but then again, those bugs probably already are..

For what it's worth: jQuery is currently officially supported in "IE 6.0+, FF 3.6+, Safari 5.0+, Opera, Chrome". So for all we know certain jQuery features may already be broken in older browsers, and since we're using jQuery..

We should be talking of dropping IE6; it's over ten years old and has been retarding the whole internet for years. Ensure that they get the content and don't sweat most styling issues.

Our standard is any browser with more than %1 usage on the wikimedia cluster just close to full support as possible (with some degradations allowed), IE6 is/was at ~%2.22 usage the other night when I checked.

IE6 is especially deficient, as I expect you know. It is undeniable that these deficiencies hold back good improvements for the other ~98%. The deployment of class="hlist" on en:wp (w:en:WP:HLIST, horizontal list styling in navboxes) is a good example. IE6 support is via js, which bogs down on larger pages (it's supporting IE7&8, too). It's quite possible that IE6 will linger indefinitely at something a hair above 1%. Mostly it's pirated copies in China on XP. Most people in the developing world are jumping at the various modern-and-free browsers. That 1% set in stone? Oh, and thanks for the 2.22% data point. Good to know.

If the English Wikipedia doesn't want to support IE6, that's up to them. They can make the decision to drop hlist support for IE6 if it's so much of a hassle.

If IE7 & IE8 don't need it to be done through javascript, there's no reason to do the javascript fallback in them, too. At that point, it would only "bog down" those users that you are proposing to leave with no support at all.

You probably should dig deeper in the details: according to Microsoft, IE6 has 6% of the total market share, but below 1% everywhere except Asia:

http://www.ie6countdown.com/ (official Microsoft site)

I agree we don't need to update this chart unless there is a bug we can't fix in an older browser. As long as it works we can officially support it.

Because of a recent change in support by jQuery (which ResourceLoader and thus most enhanced functionality depends on), I have updated the page and split it between "Grade A" (where everything should work), and "Grade B" (which we will maintain until either we can't (impossible bug in an old browser), or we don't have to (< 0.1% wmf usage stats). Right now the only difference in "Grade B" is support for jQuery (Firefox 2 > Firefox 3.6, Safari 3 > Safari 4)