[Building Sakai] [Using Sakai] Support for additional browsers

[Noah Botimer]

Since I suspect that I instigated some of this thread, let me clarify my position on it.

I agree with both of these perspectives, effectively. My call is for awareness and a reevaluation of our "supported set", which implies where we do our testing and to what we tend to say "report it in JIRA and we'll look at it" versus "well, that's not really supported, but you can report it and hope".

Personally, I don't think that stated and actual WebKit support is optional anymore. And, truthfully, we're not too far away, but it's by way of users and developers on the side -- not an outcome driven by a conscious QA plan.

I would tend to say that, even though the 2.8 QA has not officially been targeting Safari, Chrome, IE9, or FF4, we should make a concerted effort to at least record the issues and try to rally fixers and testers (and make it official for 2.9). I can also say, from a development perspective, that applying fixes to multiple releases (branches) is a tolerable load, but setting up all of the instances and test conditions sometimes makes it unbearable. Reports with an articulated willingness to test (under which conditions) would be helpful.

I recognize that this does constitute a marginal increase in development resource demand and, possibly, a significant one for QA. The reason I urged this conversation to happen on list is to understand whether the needs and resources are aligned and, if not, have a community discussion of possible paths forward. If, e.g., first-class Safari support is a top priority for a number of partner institutions, the need becomes easier to recognize and plans easier to operationalize.

Thanks,
-Noah

On Mar 30, 2011, at 3:42 PM, Matthew Jones wrote:

> 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
> 
> =================================
> 
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> 
> Technology Troubleshooting: http://www.udel.edu/help
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