Wiki source code of Browser Support Strategy

Last modified by Lucas Charpentier (Sereza7) on 2023/12/19 14:24

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1 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.
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3 By "supporting" we mean:
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5 * issues created for these browsers in JIRA are not closed as ##won't fix## and we make a best effort to fix them
6 * we include these browsers in our tests (be them automated or manual)
7 * 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
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9 The complete and precise list of browsers supported in a given XWiki release is indicated in the [[Release Notes>>xwiki:ReleaseNotes.WebHome]] for that release (starting with XWiki 3.2).
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11 {{comment}}Commenting the NetMarketShare iframe since it was making the page load very hard. Keeping the gadget for when we need to make decisions on dropping/adopting new browsers{{/comment}}
12 {{comment}}In order to help us decide which browsers to support we also look at [[NetMarketShare>>http://netmarketshare.com/]] data:
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14 (% class="row" %)
15 (((
16 (% class="col-md-6" %)
17 (((
18 {{html clean="false"}}
19 <div id="desktop-browser_version_partially_combined-ww-monthly-201609-201709" width="600" height="400" style="width:600px; height: 400px;"></div><!-- You may change the values of width and height above to resize the chart --><p>Source: <a href="http://gs.statcounter.com/browser-version-partially-combined-market-share/desktop/worldwide/#monthly-201609-201709">StatCounter Global Stats - Combine Chrome (all versions) & Firefox (5+) Market Share</a></p><script type="text/javascript" src="http://www.statcounter.com/js/fusioncharts.js"></script><script type="text/javascript" src="http://gs.statcounter.com/chart.php?desktop-browser_version_partially_combined-ww-monthly-201609-201709&chartWidth=600"></script>
20 {{/html}}
21 )))
22 ))){{/comment}}
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24 = Supported Browsers =
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26 |=Browser|=Reason for supporting it (at the time)|=Notes
27 |(((
28 {{browser name="edge" version="Latest"/}}
29 )))|We support **only **the latest stable Edge release.|Official support started in XWiki 9.9. Note that Edge switched to Chromium at version 80.
30 |(((
31 {{browser name="firefox" version="Latest"/}}
32 )))|We support **only** the latest stable Firefox release, since FF4+ have automatic upgrades.|
33 |(((
34 {{browser name="chrome" version="Latest"/}}
35 )))|We support **only** the latest stable Chrome release.|
36 |(((
37 {{browser name="safari" version="Latest"/}}
38 )))|We support **only** the latest stable Safari release. It has reasonable market share and is relatively similar to Chrome as they're both based on webkit (even though Chrome is using a forked version)|Official support for it started in XWiki 3.3
39
40 = Browsers that are not supported =
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42 These are some browsers that we're not supporting or for which we've dropped support over the years.
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44 |=Browser|=Reason for not supporting it|=Starting with
45 |(((
46 {{browser name="iexplorer" version="11 Latest"/}}
47 )))|We supported **only **the latest stable IE11 release.|Official support started in XWiki 6.x and dropped in XWiki 14.0 {{footnote}}[[Forum vote for dropping support for IE11 in XWiki 14.0+>>https://forum.xwiki.org/t/drop-support-for-ie11-in-xwiki-14-0/9647]]{{/footnote}}
48 |(((
49 {{browser name="iexplorer" version="6.x"/}}
50 )))|(((
51 * it allows us to use newer technologies which are more useful,
52 * we can remove lots of hacks we've accumulated over the years
53 * 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!
54 )))|XWiki 3.3M1
55 |(((
56 {{browser name="iexplorer" version="7.x"/}}
57 )))|Currently, IE7's market share is similar to the one of IE6. They are both considered obsolete browsers for the same reasons as IE6|XWiki 3.3M1
58 |(((
59 {{browser name="iexplorer" version="8.x-9.x"/}}
60 )))|Although the market share for these browser was above 25% at the time of our support ending, we decided to stop testing and fixing in priority issues for these browsers, starting with Microsoft's announcement of ending the support for Windows XP (April 2014), in order to focus on newer browsers. XWiki Extensions which require XWiki 7.0+ should also drop support for IE8/9|XWiki 7.0
61 |(((
62 {{browser name="iexplorer" version="10.x"/}}
63 )))|We replaced the IE10's support with Microsoft Edge.|XWiki 9.9
64 |(((
65 {{browser name="opera" version=""/}}
66 )))|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.|
67 |(((
68 {{browser name="firefox" version="3.6"/}}
69 )))|Mozilla ended the support of Firefox 3.6 and they now automatically offer the possibility to update to the latest version of Firefox| XWiki 4.1 M1
70 | Others|Same strategy as Opera above|

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