[Building Sakai] Support for additional browsers

[Matthew Jones]

This issue seems to come up every few months and I'm not sure what the real
problem is. I guess it depends on what you defined "supported" as being and
how up-to-date you stay with Sakai.

If there is an issue with any browser (IE9/Safari/Chrome) and it's reported
in jira, from what I can see it gets fixed reasonably fast. What specific
issues are you having? Are you filing jiras for them?

Just a quick search shows that many specific Chrome/Safari issues were
reported and fixed recently:

* SAK-20129 - Chrome specific rendering of options misses radiobox for
Default setting - Assignments
* SAK-19561  -When uploading a files to Resources in Safari, 'Upload Files
Now' button is disabled
* SAK-15797 - Worksite setup table borders break on hover / invisible in
Safari

Even IE9 has been tested and many things are currently being worked on,
likely not until 2.8.1, but there is the temporary emulation fix.

I guess the biggest problem with this is if you don't upgrade Sakai often
(staying at most 1 major release behind), browsers will keep moving forward
and you'll be stuck on a release with incompatibilities. For instance 2.7 is
"significantly" better on mobile devices [1] and chrome/safari than 2.6 was
, and 2.8 and 2.9 will work even better. (Especially if those IU REST feeds
get in) There just aren't the (people) resources available to keep 2-3 year
old releases of Sakai up-to-date. Also, many browsers unfortunately don't
support an "Emulate old version" feature like IE9 does that we were able to
patch in with KNL-697.

Personally I work and do most browsing in the (latest greatest) Chrome. Many
of the developers around me are using Safari. We use various features of
Sakai daily and often hear when somethings wrong and file/fix it, but are on
a reasonably newer of Sakai (2.7.1). I guess it's all a problem of limited
QA as you said (though the users are also QA) and what you locally need to
support. Locally at Umich I'd say emphatically that we don't need to support
IE6 or IE7 anymore but we do have to "support" Chrome & Safari because the
faculty and students aren't going to stop using it. And based on the recent
numbers they are using it as it these 2 webkit based browsers combine for
nearly 50% of all usage.

[1] https://jira.sakaiproject.org/browse/SAK/component/11220

On Wed, Mar 30, 2011 at 2:59 PM, Mathieu Plourde <mathieu at udel.edu> wrote:

> Dear fellow Sakaigers,
>
> The use of Mac computers on our campus has grown dramatically over the last
> few years, and as a result many faculty and students would like to be able
> to use the Safari browser when using Sakai. The popularity of all iOS
> devices which rely on Safari also makes a case for making Sakai compatible
> with Sakai. Many features do work successfully in Sakai on this browser, but
> unfortunately there are several instances where unexpected behavior can
> occur and so we are compelled to warn our users, and request that Safari not
> be used with Sakai.
>
> Similarly, Chrome has recently been rated as the third most used browser
> behind Internet Explorer and Firefox. Since Chrome, Safari, and many mobile
> device browsers are based on the Webkit engine, once we make one of them
> compliant, we may find that it is relatively easy to make Sakai work with
> others. [1]
>
> This is not the first time that such a call to action has circulated
> on-list, but we believe that it is time to rethink our Firefox-centric
> approach, not only for Sakai OAE, but for the 2.x branches as well.
>
> Any thoughts or progress on these fronts?
>
> [1] http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser-na-monthly-201003-201103
>
> =================================
>
> Mathieu Plourde, MBA
> Project Leader, LMS/Instructional Designer
> IT-Client Support & Services
> mathieu at udel.edu
> Office: 302-831-4060
>
> =================================
>
> TOP LINKS:
>
> Technology Troubleshooting: http://www.udel.edu/help
> Sakai at UD Support and Training: http://www.udel.edu/sakai/training
>
> =================================
>
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