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I use TailwindCSS for some personal projects, works great, no major complaints. But as a dev in the government sector, I'm disappointed in the way they just whi

I use TailwindCSS for some personal projects, works great, no major complaints. But as a dev in the government sector, I'm disappointed in the way they just whimsically dump Internet Explorer 11 in their release notes [1], as if it's a minor thing / cool to hate on. In my bubble, there's no alternative right now. Switching to a more modern browser requires an enormous amount of agility throughout the pipeline that does not exist. To adopt a shiny new browser, agencies would need to push browser updates to all their client machines every ~4-6 weeks [2]. Solution providers need to perform continuous testing on their web apps (browser vendors do not guarantee minor updates are backwards compatible), creating patches, which need to be submitted to the government for regression testing... and oops that took too long and the next EOL is here. With Microsoft's surprise obsolescence of Internet Explorer 11 across all its cloud offerings 1Q 2021, we're headed straight into a brick wall. Very interested to see what shakes out here. I suspect initially we'll see the government just deploy and use older unsupported copies of Chrome/Edge browser, under the guise of "well it's better than IE11 right?". Longer term, ...? [1] https://blog.tailwindcss.com/tailwindcss-v2#incompatibility-with-ie11 https://blog.tailwindcss.com/tailwindcss-v2#incompatibility-... [2] Vendors do not support these versions after EOL for any reason. Firefox has an ESR branch, bless them, but some agencies have now increased scrutiny of Mozilla software for recent political/security reasons.

pikseladam 6y ago
Of course you can still use your current system but with windows 10, most of ie11 users switched to never browsers and current use of ie11 is under %1.5 right now. https://www.w3counter.com/globalstats.php?year=2020&month=10 https://www.w3counter.com/globalstats.php?year=2020&month=10
mintone 6y ago
Whenever this comes up I wonder whether there is an opportunity to create a govt specific browser (based on Chromium initially say) which abstracts responsibility to a specific vendor with clearance ala Lockheed or similar. Web is only going to become more of an a) complex environment and b) normal daily workspace for users so it makes sense in the longer term, and considering the size of market we're talking about, licensing would make it worth it.
mssundaram 6y ago
I work in health tech and it is about the same - lots of IE 11 and old versions of Windows. I've heard it's very similar in fin tech, too
yesimahuman 6y ago
At least now the costs are properly placed on the party responsible for paying them. Too often users have expected library authors to support obsolete, insecure browsers along with the other maintenance and innovation work they are doing. Now you're in a situation where you can start applying pressure to force change, since your tooling no longer supports your current environment. That would never have happened if Tailwind just kept paying your costs.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
dragonwriter 6y ago
> But as a dev in the government sector, I'm disappointed in the way they just whimsically dump Internet Explorer 11 As a dev in the government sector, working for a large public agency, that's pretty much our attitude to IE 11. I mean, sure, staff in our agency need to keep it around for some legacy apps that haven't yet been migrated or replaced, but its being phased out and we're not supporting it beyond making sure that we detect it and put up a banner explaining that its not supported for some of our current (internal and external) apps.
- withinrafael 6y ago
  How do they keep the modern browsers up to date? Are these just Internet-connected machines, they take updates, and everyone just hopes for the best?
  - earthboundkid 6y ago
    Flip it: you’re using a browser that is dead and just “hoping for the best” on internet connected machines. If you’re not planning to stay up to date, you’re just hoping for the best.
mmmateo 6y ago
Even so, that doesn’t mean everyone else should shoulder the burden of larger css bundles and slower updates. Version 1.9 is still great.
joelellis 6y ago
Something to note: If the update frequency of chrome is too much for you, you can use Firefox ESR [0]. This lets you upgrade major versions less often whilst still getting regular security patches, and it's often used in Linux distros that don't want to ship the latest Firefox. [0] https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/enterprise/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/enterprise/

pikseladam 6y ago

Of course you can still use your current system but with windows 10, most of ie11 users switched to never browsers and current use of ie11 is under %1.5 right now. https://www.w3counter.com/globalstats.php?year=2020&month=10 https://www.w3counter.com/globalstats.php?year=2020&month=10

mintone 6y ago

Whenever this comes up I wonder whether there is an opportunity to create a govt specific browser (based on Chromium initially say) which abstracts responsibility to a specific vendor with clearance ala Lockheed or similar. Web is only going to become more of an a) complex environment and b) normal daily workspace for users so it makes sense in the longer term, and considering the size of market we're talking about, licensing would make it worth it.

mssundaram 6y ago

I work in health tech and it is about the same - lots of IE 11 and old versions of Windows. I've heard it's very similar in fin tech, too

yesimahuman 6y ago

At least now the costs are properly placed on the party responsible for paying them. Too often users have expected library authors to support obsolete, insecure browsers along with the other maintenance and innovation work they are doing. Now you're in a situation where you can start applying pressure to force change, since your tooling no longer supports your current environment. That would never have happened if Tailwind just kept paying your costs.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

dragonwriter 6y ago

> But as a dev in the government sector, I'm disappointed in the way they just whimsically dump Internet Explorer 11 As a dev in the government sector, working for a large public agency, that's pretty much our attitude to IE 11. I mean, sure, staff in our agency need to keep it around for some legacy apps that haven't yet been migrated or replaced, but its being phased out and we're not supporting it beyond making sure that we detect it and put up a banner explaining that its not supported for some of our current (internal and external) apps.

withinrafael 6y ago
How do they keep the modern browsers up to date? Are these just Internet-connected machines, they take updates, and everyone just hopes for the best?
- earthboundkid 6y ago
  Flip it: you’re using a browser that is dead and just “hoping for the best” on internet connected machines. If you’re not planning to stay up to date, you’re just hoping for the best.

mmmateo 6y ago

Even so, that doesn’t mean everyone else should shoulder the burden of larger css bundles and slower updates. Version 1.9 is still great.

joelellis 6y ago

Something to note: If the update frequency of chrome is too much for you, you can use Firefox ESR [0]. This lets you upgrade major versions less often whilst still getting regular security patches, and it's often used in Linux distros that don't want to ship the latest Firefox. [0] https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/enterprise/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/enterprise/