4 ms·

What features/browsers are you talking about specifically? On one hand, you cannot expect any developer to support a browser that is completely unheard of to t

What features/browsers are you talking about specifically? On one hand, you cannot expect any developer to support a browser that is completely unheard of to them, or expect codebases to freeze because something doesn't work on some certain ancient Opera Mini version. Developers serve business goals, which are tied to user goals. If a single user is using some super niche browser with a custom home-brewed rendering engine, then I don't feel bad about not supporting it - not at all. On the other hand, if you're talking about something like WebNotifications on IE11 or a certain browser API on a B-list browser, then there should certainly be some graceful fallback instead of the entire site being unusable.

klabb3 4y ago
> support a browser The point is you really don’t need to anymore. The IE6 days are long gone, thankfully. It’s very rare that something non-essential breaks if you just follow the standards. At worst you tend to get a semi-broken layout issues, but still functional. > if you're talking about something like WebNotifications on IE11 or a certain browser API on a B-list browser, then there should certainly be some graceful fallback These sites need to have fallbacks for those types of specializations anyway, since there’s enough variation even among the popular platforms/browsers/last few versions. Anyway, I don’t think we’re disagreeing at all. Just wanted to mention for those that aren’t doing frontend today that this kind of browser support issues is almost always a result of blatant disregard for best practices – like user agent gating – or user hostile behavior like ad-tech fingerprinting.
- criddell 4y ago
  > if you just follow the standards There are standards and then there are de facto standards. Sadly, it looks like Chromium is well on its way to being the latter. As soon as Apple is forced to allow alternate browsers on iOS it’s only a matter of time before the takeover is complete.

klabb3 4y ago

> support a browser The point is you really don’t need to anymore. The IE6 days are long gone, thankfully. It’s very rare that something non-essential breaks if you just follow the standards. At worst you tend to get a semi-broken layout issues, but still functional. > if you're talking about something like WebNotifications on IE11 or a certain browser API on a B-list browser, then there should certainly be some graceful fallback These sites need to have fallbacks for those types of specializations anyway, since there’s enough variation even among the popular platforms/browsers/last few versions. Anyway, I don’t think we’re disagreeing at all. Just wanted to mention for those that aren’t doing frontend today that this kind of browser support issues is almost always a result of blatant disregard for best practices – like user agent gating – or user hostile behavior like ad-tech fingerprinting.

criddell 4y ago
> if you just follow the standards There are standards and then there are de facto standards. Sadly, it looks like Chromium is well on its way to being the latter. As soon as Apple is forced to allow alternate browsers on iOS it’s only a matter of time before the takeover is complete.