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Most web devs get screemed at (by their peer reviewers or [preferably] static analysis tools) if they use a feature which has less then like 98% support without

Most web devs get screemed at (by their peer reviewers or [preferably] static analysis tools) if they use a feature which has less then like 98% support without gracefully denigrating it, and rightfully so. But your GP is in a massive minority, if every developer would cater to 11 year old browsers we would be wasting a lot of developer time to inferior designs, with more hacks which brake the web for even more users.

anonymous908213 10mo ago
I don't know about "most". For various reasons, I use a 2-year-old browser on a daily basis (alongside an up-to-date browser), and I routinely run into websites that are completely broken on the 2-year-old browser. Unrelated to outdatedness, I recently ran into a local government website that e-mailed me my password in plaintext upon account creation. I have no way of accurately quantifying whether "most" web developers fall into the competent or incompetent bucket, but regardless of which there are more of, there are a significant enough number of incompetent ones.
- runarberg 10mo ago
  I think a very common browserlist target is "last 2 version, not dead, > 0.2%". So if you have a 2-year old browser you are probably dozens of versions behind and are very likely in that 2% of users which developers simply ignore.
  - anonymous908213 10mo ago
    Going back 2 versions, only ~50% of Chrome users are on v140 or newer. If you go back another 2 versions, that number increases to around ~66%. Going back another 2 versions only increases that to 68%, with no huge gains from each further 2 step jump. That you think your target gives you 98% coverage is concerning for the state of web developers, to say the least. After checking further, almost 20% of Chrome users are on a 2+ year old version. If you handle that gracefully by polyfilling etc., fine. If you "simply ignore" and shut out 20% of users (or 50% of users per your own admission of support target), as I have encountered in the wild countless times, you are actively detrimental to your business and would probably be fired if the people in charge of your salary knew what you were doing, especially since these new browser features are very rarely mission-critical.
    - deleted 10mo ago
      [deleted]
    - crazygringo 10mo ago
      Can you link to the source for your stats? I'm not finding anything to corroborate that -- I'm seeing stats suggesting things like 90% of Chrome users are on the newest version after two weeks: https://timotijhof.net/posts/2023/browser-adoption/ https://timotijhof.net/posts/2023/browser-adoption/ And Stat Counter shows that the current version of Chrome utterly dominates in any given month: https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-version-market-share/desktop/worldwide/ https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-version-market-share/desk... The glacial adoption you're describing doesn't make much sense when you consider how aggressively Chrome auto-updates, so I'm quite confused.
      - anonymous908213 10mo ago
        My go-to reference is this, which itself cites statcounter: https://caniuse.com/usage-table https://caniuse.com/usage-table I was specifically referencing desktop Chrome, not including Chrome for Android, but other than that, if there are discrepancies, I'm not sure what the cause is.
        crazygringo 10mo ago
        Very interesting. The Timo Tijhof data is based on Wikipedia visits, and shouldn't be affected by adblockers. Meanwhile, StatCounter is based on sites that use its analytics, and on users not using adblockers that might block it. The CanIUse table makes clear there's a long tail of outdated Chrome versions that each individually have tiny usage, but they seem to add up. It's fascinating they're so wildly different. I'm inclined to think Wikipedia, being the #9 site on the web [1], is going to produce a more accurate distribution of users overall. I can't help but wonder if StatCounter is used by a ton of relatively low-traffic sites, and the long tail of outdated Chrome is actually headless Chrome crawlers, and so they make up a large proportion relative to actual user traffic? Since they're not pushed to update, the way consumers are. And especially with ad-blocking real users excluded too? Anecdotally, in web development I just haven't seen users complain about sites not working in Chrome, where it turns out the culprit is outdated Chrome. In contrast to complaints about e.g. not working in Firefox, which happen all the time. Or where it breaks in Chrome but it turns out it's an extension interfering. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most-visited_websites https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most-visited_websites

anonymous908213 10mo ago

I don't know about "most". For various reasons, I use a 2-year-old browser on a daily basis (alongside an up-to-date browser), and I routinely run into websites that are completely broken on the 2-year-old browser. Unrelated to outdatedness, I recently ran into a local government website that e-mailed me my password in plaintext upon account creation. I have no way of accurately quantifying whether "most" web developers fall into the competent or incompetent bucket, but regardless of which there are more of, there are a significant enough number of incompetent ones.

runarberg 10mo ago
I think a very common browserlist target is "last 2 version, not dead, > 0.2%". So if you have a 2-year old browser you are probably dozens of versions behind and are very likely in that 2% of users which developers simply ignore.
- anonymous908213 10mo ago
  Going back 2 versions, only ~50% of Chrome users are on v140 or newer. If you go back another 2 versions, that number increases to around ~66%. Going back another 2 versions only increases that to 68%, with no huge gains from each further 2 step jump. That you think your target gives you 98% coverage is concerning for the state of web developers, to say the least. After checking further, almost 20% of Chrome users are on a 2+ year old version. If you handle that gracefully by polyfilling etc., fine. If you "simply ignore" and shut out 20% of users (or 50% of users per your own admission of support target), as I have encountered in the wild countless times, you are actively detrimental to your business and would probably be fired if the people in charge of your salary knew what you were doing, especially since these new browser features are very rarely mission-critical.
  - deleted 10mo ago
    [deleted]
  - crazygringo 10mo ago
    Can you link to the source for your stats? I'm not finding anything to corroborate that -- I'm seeing stats suggesting things like 90% of Chrome users are on the newest version after two weeks: https://timotijhof.net/posts/2023/browser-adoption/ https://timotijhof.net/posts/2023/browser-adoption/ And Stat Counter shows that the current version of Chrome utterly dominates in any given month: https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-version-market-share/desktop/worldwide/ https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-version-market-share/desk... The glacial adoption you're describing doesn't make much sense when you consider how aggressively Chrome auto-updates, so I'm quite confused.
    - anonymous908213 10mo ago
      My go-to reference is this, which itself cites statcounter: https://caniuse.com/usage-table https://caniuse.com/usage-table I was specifically referencing desktop Chrome, not including Chrome for Android, but other than that, if there are discrepancies, I'm not sure what the cause is.
      - crazygringo 10mo ago
        Very interesting. The Timo Tijhof data is based on Wikipedia visits, and shouldn't be affected by adblockers. Meanwhile, StatCounter is based on sites that use its analytics, and on users not using adblockers that might block it. The CanIUse table makes clear there's a long tail of outdated Chrome versions that each individually have tiny usage, but they seem to add up. It's fascinating they're so wildly different. I'm inclined to think Wikipedia, being the #9 site on the web [1], is going to produce a more accurate distribution of users overall. I can't help but wonder if StatCounter is used by a ton of relatively low-traffic sites, and the long tail of outdated Chrome is actually headless Chrome crawlers, and so they make up a large proportion relative to actual user traffic? Since they're not pushed to update, the way consumers are. And especially with ad-blocking real users excluded too? Anecdotally, in web development I just haven't seen users complain about sites not working in Chrome, where it turns out the culprit is outdated Chrome. In contrast to complaints about e.g. not working in Firefox, which happen all the time. Or where it breaks in Chrome but it turns out it's an extension interfering. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most-visited_websites https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most-visited_websites