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...
Great news!
Have we considered dropping IE 10 to grade C given Microsoft ended support for it more than a year ago and it seems to be as low as IE 9 (only a 0.24% *[1]*)?
Also, a question. Does this mean we don't need to explicitly list the *es5-shim* any more?
Thanks for the great work.
*[1]* all-sites-by-browser/browser-family-and-major-hierarchical-view https://analytics.wikimedia.org/dashboards/browsers/#all-sites-by-browser/browser-family-and-major-hierarchical-view with this filter: 2017-01-01 - 2017-03-20
On Sat, Mar 18, 2017 at 5:03 AM, Krinkle krinklemail@gmail.com wrote:
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/browser-family-and-major-hierarchical-view (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-and-windows-8/ _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
On Mon, 20 Mar 2017 at 07:19 Joaquin Oltra Hernandez < jhernandez@wikimedia.org> wrote:
Great news!
Have we considered dropping IE 10 to grade C given Microsoft ended support for it more than a year ago and it seems to be as low as IE 9 (only a 0.24% *[1]*)?
Certainly, that would be the next step. I think that the additional burden of IE10 over IE11 is relatively slight, so I'd probably recommend keeping it in Grade A for at least a few months more, unless there's an urgent need. As always, each non-core feature needs to decide for itself what support level is provided for older browsers.
(Last week, IE10 is down to 0.22%, BTW — lower than IE4, let alone IE6.)
Also, a question. Does this mean we don't need to explicitly list the *es5-shim* any more?
Yes, this will mean that. But not until the patch[*] is merged, at which point depending on es5-shim will become a no-op with a deprecation notice (and I'll do patches to fix up WMF-production extensions).
[*] - https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/340893/
BTW, when looking at these stats, note also that the percentage for IE7 (2.9% recently) is likely inflated due to unidentified bot traffic: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T148461#3011175 https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T157404
On Mon, Mar 20, 2017 at 11:07 AM, James Forrester jforrester@wikimedia.org wrote:
On Mon, 20 Mar 2017 at 07:19 Joaquin Oltra Hernandez < jhernandez@wikimedia.org> wrote:
Great news!
Have we considered dropping IE 10 to grade C given Microsoft ended support for it more than a year ago and it seems to be as low as IE 9 (only a 0.24% *[1]*)?
Certainly, that would be the next step. I think that the additional burden of IE10 over IE11 is relatively slight, so I'd probably recommend keeping it in Grade A for at least a few months more, unless there's an urgent need. As always, each non-core feature needs to decide for itself what support level is provided for older browsers.
(Last week, IE10 is down to 0.22%, BTW — lower than IE4, let alone IE6.)
Also, a question. Does this mean we don't need to explicitly list the *es5-shim* any more?
Yes, this will mean that. But not until the patch[*] is merged, at which point depending on es5-shim will become a no-op with a deprecation notice (and I'll do patches to fix up WMF-production extensions).
[*] - https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/340893/
James D. Forrester Lead Product Manager, Editing Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. jforrester at wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l | @jdforrester _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
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