Hi all,
Starting in April 2017, MediaWiki will end Grade A support for browsers that do not implement ES5 JavaScript. [1] This affects Internet Explorer 9 users and others using very old mobile browsers. [2] Users with these browsers will still be able to browse and contribute to the projects. Enhanced features will become unavailable. For example, the enhanced edit toolbar will not appear, and notification buttons will take you to a page rather than open a pop-out.
This change will affect roughly 0.59% of page views to Wikimedia wikis (as of February 2017 [2]). Internet Explorer 9 (0.27%), mobile users on iOS 4 (Mobile Safari 5 — 0.02% of traffic), and Android 2 (0.1%). For comparison, 0.3% of traffic comes from Internet Explorer 8 (JavaScript-less since January 2016).
Providing JavaScript for IE 9 and other ES3 browsers adds a significant maintenance burden. It also hinders site speed for all users. Microsoft ended its official support for Internet Explorer 9 and 10 in January 2016. [4] Users unable to upgrade from IE 9 or Android 2 will have a faster experience going forward, based on well-tested and more stable code.
This change will land in the development branch used on all Wikimedia wikis this April, to be released as part of MediaWiki 1.29 around May 2017.
Please help carry this message into your communities. (Tech News has announced this change as well)
Yours, -- Timo
For details about the JavaScript-less experience, see https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Compatibility
[1] http://caniuse.com/#feat=use-strict Browser support for ES5 (strict) [2] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T128115#3066522 Breakdown of Wikimedia page views from pre-ES5 browsers [3] https://analytics.wikimedia.org/dashboards/browsers/#all-sites-by-browser/br... (Note: Filter date to last 2-3 months only!) [4] https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/WindowsForBusiness/End-of-IE-support http://venturebeat.com/2016/01/12/microsoft-ends-support-for-ie8-ie9-ie10-an...