On 11/20/2012 05:19 PM, James Forrester wrote:
There would be a "top level" outline policy - a small number of browsers are supported (i.e., WMF will keep spending money until they work):
Anything not in this list may "happen to work" but WMF Engineering will not spend resources (read, developer time) on it.
I don't think that a binary 'is supported' list is that helpful for the optimization of average user experience with limited resources.
Progressive enhancement [1] (aka 'responsive design') has in the past been very successful at making most of our users happy. If it is technically possible to provide a sane (but not necessarily as flashy) user experience for users of older browsers with little extra work, then that is an easy optimization win that should not be ignored.
This does complicate matters a bit for product, as decisions in this area are very dependent on technical detail and differ from case to case. It would however be sad to see more manpower in product to result in less attention being given to this detail in the name of easily presentable support charts. Users receiving an unreasonable 'your platform is not supported at all' message do not care about browser support charts- all that matters to them is that they are shut out of whatever they were trying to do.
What exactly most users are trying to do might actually vary a bit between browser generations, which can also be exploited in the optimization process. I would guess that experienced editors are more likely to run recent software than anonymous users. Features geared towards anonymous users should thus probably emphasize compatibility over flashiness, while features aimed at power users can make more use of recent browser technology.
Gabriel
[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_enhancement