proposed browser support for Infusion 1.4

[Justin Obara]

To stir up this discussion again before the impending Infusion 1.4 release. Yahoo has updated their browser support scheme.

http://www.yuiblog.com/blog/2011/07/12/gbs-update/

It's quite different than before and takes a much more google-like approach. Instead of defining grades, they just define a testing baseline. Which means they will test across the various browsers but won't guarantee the same experience across all of them. This works well with our thinking on graceful degradation for less modern browsers. 

Another interesting thing that they've done is to no longer prescribe the OS for which the browser should be tested on, with the exception of cases where the browser and OS are tightly coupled. 

I think going into the future this may be an approach that we should explore. From my memory, I don't recall very many instances where browser x behaved differently in OS y and z. Although there have been cases, and we could test these issues further as they come up. Doing this would reduce our testing matrix from 11 to 8 configurations. 

As with all things there are risks. I'm not necessarily convinced we should do this for the 1.4 release, although it would help to speed up testing. However, we should definitely keep it in mind going forward and give it some critical thought for post 1.4.

Thanks
Justin

On 2011-06-24, at 8:19 PM, Eli Cochran wrote:

> Just a point if info. For the Sakai OAE product, Sakai is dropping IE6 and 7 support. 
> 
> Sent from my iPhone
> Please excuse any spelling errors and the brevity of my reply. 
> 
> On Jun 25, 2011, at 12:55 AM, Colin Clark <colinbdclark at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>> +1 for the browser support list Justin proposed.
>> 
>> As much as it pains me, I'm still a -1 for dropping IE6 until its market share drops in corporate and edu environments a bit more. I wonder, though, if there is an opportunity to let IE7 go?
>> 
>> Colin
>> 
>> On 2011-06-24, at 9:52 AM, Justin Obara wrote:
>> 
>>> That's a good point Michelle. Here's Microsoft's stats on IE6 so far http://www.theie6countdown.com/default.aspx
>>> 
>>> Thanks
>>> Justin
>>> 
>>> On 2011-06-24, at 9:45 AM, Michelle D'Souza wrote:
>>> 
>>>> This looks good to me. The only thing I'm wondering if whether we can downgrade our support of IE 6. The number of versions of IE that we are supporting is going to lead to a longer and longer QA cycle. Is there a way we can get some numbers on whether or not our users are using IE6?
>>>> 
>>>> Michelle
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> On 2011-06-22, at 4:55 PM, Justin Obara wrote:
>>>> 
>>>>> Traditionally Infusion has followed yahoo's a-grade support, for out browser support. We're in a bit of an odd situation at this point. We're nearing a release. Yahoo has yet to update to update their a-grade support this year, but promise to some time in Q2. Mozilla just released Firefox 5 which is set to replace Firefox 4.
>>>>> 
>>>>> It seems like we'll have to diverge from Yahoo's a-grade browser support, at least for one release. Here's an example of the proposed new browser support.
>>>>> 
>>>>> Chrome - latest (Win XP)
>>>>> Firefox 5 (Win XP, Win 7, Mac OS 10.6)
>>>>> Firefox 3.6 (Win XP)
>>>>> IE 9 (Win 7)
>>>>> IE 8 (Win XP, Win 7)
>>>>> IE 7 (Win XP)
>>>>> IE 6 (Win XP)
>>>>> Safari (Mac OS 10.6)
>>>>> 
>>>>> Infusion's current browser support can be seen on the wiki:
>>>>> http://wiki.fluidproject.org/display/fluid/Browser+Support
>>>>> 
>>>>> Please let us know what you think about this proposal and cast your vote.
>>>>> 
>>>>> Thanks
>>>>> Justin
>>>>> _______________________________________________________
>>>>> fluid-work mailing list - fluid-work at fluidproject.org
>>>>> To unsubscribe, change settings or access archives,
>>>>> see http://fluidproject.org/mailman/listinfo/fluid-work
>>>> 
>>>> ------------------------------------------------------
>>>> Michelle D'Souza
>>>> Inclusive Software Developer Researcher
>>>> Inclusive Design Research Centre
>>>> 
>>> 
>>> _______________________________________________________
>>> fluid-work mailing list - fluid-work at fluidproject.org
>>> To unsubscribe, change settings or access archives,
>>> see http://fluidproject.org/mailman/listinfo/fluid-work
>> 
>> ---
>> Colin Clark
>> Technical Lead, Fluid Project
>> http://fluidproject.org
>> 
>> _______________________________________________________
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