Browser Support Strategy

Version 4.1 by Vincent Massol on 2014/05/09 09:03

There are a lot of browsers out there and supporting them all in all versions is just too hard to be done in a quality manner.

By "supporting" we mean:

  • issues created for these browsers in JIRA are not closed as won't fix and we make a best effort to fix them
  • we include these browsers in our tests (be them automated or manual)
  • when we create new features or modify existing features we make a best effort to verify that they work on the supported list of browsers

The complete and precise list of browsers supported in a given XWiki release is indicated in the Release Notes for that release (starting with XE 3.2).

In order to help us decide which browsers to support we also look at NetMarketShare. Here's the Desktop Browser Version Market Share pie chart:

document.getElementById("na635352156554410000").src="http://netmarketshare.com/report.aspx?qprid=2"+String.fromCharCode(38)+"qptimeframe=M"+String.fromCharCode(38)+"qpsp=180"+String.fromCharCode(38)+"qpnp=4"+String.fromCharCode(38)+"qpch=350"+String.fromCharCode(38)+"qpdt=1"+String.fromCharCode(38)+"qpct=3"+String.fromCharCode(38)+"qpcustomd=0"+String.fromCharCode(38)+"qpcid=fw330585"+String.fromCharCode(38)+"qpf=16"+String.fromCharCode(38)+"qpwidth=600"+String.fromCharCode(38)+"qpdisplay=1111"+String.fromCharCode(38)+"qpmr=10"+String.fromCharCode(38)+"site="+window.location.hostname

Supported Browsers

BrowserReason for supporting it (at the time)Notes
Internet Explorer
8.x
Currently IE8 has the largest market share of all IEs and it is widely used in enterprise environments.
Internet Explorer
9.x
IE9 is slowly getting ground in front of IE8Support for it started in XE 3.3
Firefox
4+
We support only the latest stable Firefox release, since FF4+ have automatic upgrades.
Chrome
13+
We support only the latest stable version Chrome release, similar to our FF4+ support.
Safari
5
Reasonable market shareSupport for it started in XE 3.3

Browsers that are not supported

BrowserReason for not supporting itStarting with
Internet Explorer
6.x
  • it allows us to use newer technologies which are more useful,
  • we can remove lots of hacks we've accumulated over the years
  • we have more time to work on more relevant browser versions. A lot of products have also dropped support for IE6 and it was time we did it too!
XE 3.3M1
Internet Explorer
7.x
Currently, IE7's market share is similar to the one of IE6. They are both considered obsolete browsers for the same reasons as IE6XE 3.3M1
Opera
We don't officially support Opera. This means that we don't test against it all the time, we don't ensure that new features work on it, but if someone raises an issue in jira and it's easy to fix (or if someone provides a patch) then we fix it.
Firefox
3.6
Mozilla ended the support of Firefox 3.6 and they now automatically offer the possibility to update to the latest version of Firefox XE 4.1 M1
     OthersSame strategy as Opera above
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