So at least test on recent versions of the three major engines.
Ask HN: How relevant is cross-browser testing anymore?
71–80 of 97 posts
Re: Ask HN: How relevant is cross-browser testing anymore?
#72I don't think it's worth testing on old versions of Chrome and Firefox since they're updated automatically. iOS Safari on the other hand, can't be updated on older phones since it's tied to iOS updates. This makes any Safari bug linger for a few years. It's also the only rendering engine available on iphone so some people are truly stuck using an old version. So I'd say, test on Chrome because it's ubiquitous and tes…
I don't disagree that most versions/instances of Chrome are updated regularly, but implying that this is universal is questionable. Chrome is only updated if the user lets it happen. I can't count the number of times I've watched some co-worker share their screen on a conference call and the Chrome update button is lit up, but apparently that's not a trigger to these people (I update pretty much as soon as I notice t…
So in my opinion, in order, I'd test on: - current Chrome - current Safari - older Safari - older Chrome & current Firefox
Not sure what comes next, IE 11 maybe? I guess at some point it's good to look into automating some testing.
And it's worth noting, as with most things, that "it depends", I don't expect the same browser support from something like Figma and from a government website for example.
Re: Ask HN: How relevant is cross-browser testing anymore?
#73Times have changed in that you won't have layers and layers of branching logic to work around browsers that aggressively disagree with each other. But Chrome tends to fudge the web standards in some of their dark corners, Firefox tends to stick to the letter of the web standards rather than the spirit, and Safari tends to have random little gaps and quirks
Your UI will probably be usable without cross-browser testing (assuming you're not doing anything exotic), but it will probably have little things here and there that aren't quite right
Re: Ask HN: How relevant is cross-browser testing anymore?
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
Painful as it is to admit, even Firefox is not worth testing. In our B2B site, more people are using IE11 than FF. https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share at ~3% of overall share / 7% desktop-only share it's hard to justify putting extra effort.
Maybe they are not using Firefox, because your site is broken in it, and they have no other way to tell you this?
Re: Ask HN: How relevant is cross-browser testing anymore?
#75We’ll probably see Gecko used in more embedded applications but Firefox is a joke at this point.
Re: Ask HN: How relevant is cross-browser testing anymore?
#76Re: Ask HN: How relevant is cross-browser testing anymore?
#77Real browsers like Chrome, Firefox and Edge generally "Just Work", Safari on the other end seems to be an endless tire fire that either implements things poorly or not at all. Doubly true for the iOS versions which generally tend to be older and worse than desktop Safari.
Re: Ask HN: How relevant is cross-browser testing anymore?
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
Painful as it is to admit, even Firefox is not worth testing. In our B2B site, more people are using IE11 than FF. https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share at ~3% of overall share / 7% desktop-only share it's hard to justify putting extra effort.
It's around 3% of my pageviews as measured by javascript (e.g. statcounter) but it's 15-20% of my pageviews as seen in my server logs. Now, we might say that the server stats are wrong. But it could also be that the javascript stats are wrong, since firefox comes with tracker blocking. I don't know how to tell.
Re: Ask HN: How relevant is cross-browser testing anymore?
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
We sometimes hit a bug in Safari which doesn't appear in GNOME Web, which is annoying, because that's really the only WebKit-based browser that runs on my machine. I'd be happy to better support Safari if I wouldn't have to buy new hardware for it :/
It is absurd that Apple doesn't distribute Safari to other desktop platforms or at least make it source available so the community could compile it and fix bugs for themselves.
Re: Ask HN: How relevant is cross-browser testing anymore?
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
Painful as it is to admit, even Firefox is not worth testing. In our B2B site, more people are using IE11 than FF. https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share at ~3% of overall share / 7% desktop-only share it's hard to justify putting extra effort.
It's not just about the number of your users who are directly using Firefox; it's also about ensuring your code isn't inadvertently depending on non-standard Chrome quirks, and promoting standards compliance, portability, robustness, and such-like goodness on the web. (Test IE11 as well, by all means, if it's relevant to your users; but it's much less relevant to the future of the web.)