On 07/05/2013 06:44 PM, Brion Vibber wrote:
These are going to balance out differently depending on the wiki feature, on the browser features it depends on, on what the feature does/is used for, and the relative ease of user workarounds like updating or using another browser.
Agreed. I think we should set a go-to baseline, while allowing considered deviations (e.g. VisualEditor temporarily supporting no Internet Explorer version but having it as a part of their roadmap).
It's also important to set what browsers we absolutely won't crash or throw JS errors for (even if full functionality isn't there) (this should be automatically testable in most cases).
If we must set a blanket policy for MediaWiki, I think it should be pretty general, something like:
- *current* release of all major browsers with 'evergreen' releases
(Chrome, Firefox, Safari)
- a chosen *subset* of major versions of IE
- a clear expectation that some advanced features won't work with some
versions of some browsers, and a sane policy for acceptable fallbacks?
Agreed, that's kind of reflected in the current (deprecated) Class A/Class B, though it could be more clear, and people are not happy with the current actual versions (e.g. IE6+ being class B).
Another example:
search auto-complete -> search
Auto-complete is a feature people expect for "modern" browsers, but it's okay to just provide search for the others.
Of course, we should use feature detection to avoid throwing errors, and support extra browsers when possible.
Matt Flaschen