Thread: Proposal: Drop support for Internet Explorer

Check the analytics... I think you'll find dropping it is a non-issue. In my own web service, I found that IE (all versions) constituted only about 1% of my users. 

So I dropped support for IE (since it was preventing me from fully adopting ES6), and there was not a single complaint from my users. 

Cheers, 

Dave

On Tue., Apr. 7, 2020, 3:36 a.m. Dave Page, <dpage@pgadmin.org> wrote:

All,

Internet Explorer has long been superseded by Microsoft Edge, and even that has recently moved to using Chromium as it's core engine. Version 11 was originally released in 2013, and though Microsoft have committed to supporting it until 2025, as far as I can tell there have been no notable new features in almost it's entire lifetime, and certainly in recent years Microsoft have only been releasing security fixes.

As you can imagine, supporting Internet Explorer has a non-trivial cost to it for the pgAdmin project. Not only do we need to test with it as well as Edge, but we also need to write code, CSS and HTML that is fully compatible with what essentially is a 7 year old browser. By comparison, for all other browsers we typically aim to support releases no more than 2 years old.

I therefore propose that we officially drop support for Internet Explorer. Practically this means that we would not test with it, and anyone reporting a bug with it would be told to use an alternate browser.

Objections/comments please?

Thanks!

--

Dave Page
Blog: http://pgsnake.blogspot.com
Twitter: @pgsnake

EnterpriseDB UK: http://www.enterprisedb.com
The Enterprise PostgreSQL Company

Check the analytics... I think you'll find dropping it is a non-issue. In my own web service, I found that IE (all versions) constituted only about 1% of my users. 

So I dropped support for IE (since it was preventing me from fully adopting ES6), and there was not a single complaint from my users. 

Cheers, 

Dave

On Tue., Apr. 7, 2020, 3:36 a.m. Dave Page, <dpage@pgadmin.org> wrote:

All,

Internet Explorer has long been superseded by Microsoft Edge, and even that has recently moved to using Chromium as it's core engine. Version 11 was originally released in 2013, and though Microsoft have committed to supporting it until 2025, as far as I can tell there have been no notable new features in almost it's entire lifetime, and certainly in recent years Microsoft have only been releasing security fixes.

As you can imagine, supporting Internet Explorer has a non-trivial cost to it for the pgAdmin project. Not only do we need to test with it as well as Edge, but we also need to write code, CSS and HTML that is fully compatible with what essentially is a 7 year old browser. By comparison, for all other browsers we typically aim to support releases no more than 2 years old.

I therefore propose that we officially drop support for Internet Explorer. Practically this means that we would not test with it, and anyone reporting a bug with it would be told to use an alternate browser.

Objections/comments please?

Thanks!

--

Dave Page
Blog: http://pgsnake.blogspot.com
Twitter: @pgsnake

EnterpriseDB UK: http://www.enterprisedb.com
The Enterprise PostgreSQL Company

Dave, 

Seeing that IE isn't standards compliant and not only is not being further developed, but Microsoft is actively discouraging its use, it is probably time to drop support for it.

I would caution *against* using browser analytics as any sort of proxy for use.  Since pgAdmin 4 lacks a UI of its own, I rely on an instance of Chromium (or Vivalidi, or Firefox, depending on the machine) to run pgAdmin under.  In every case, the browser that I am *running* pgAdmin 4 under is *not* the same browser that I use to browse websites, and so would never show up in your analytics.

Just something to keep in mind, 

rik.  

On Tue, Apr 7, 2020 at 8:00 AM Dave Page <dpage@pgadmin.org> wrote:

On Tue, Apr 7, 2020 at 12:41 PM Dave Caughey <caugheyd@gmail.com> wrote:

Check the analytics... I think you'll find dropping it is a non-issue. In my own web service, I found that IE (all versions) constituted only about 1% of my users. 

Good point - 1.9% of the visitors to the website were on IE this week. 1.8 of those were on IE11. We even had one hit from IE5...

By comparison, 72% of users were on Chrome, 13% on Firefox, with 5.5% each for Safari and Edge.

 

So I dropped support for IE (since it was preventing me from fully adopting ES6), and there was not a single complaint from my users. 

Cheers, 

Dave

On Tue., Apr. 7, 2020, 3:36 a.m. Dave Page, <dpage@pgadmin.org> wrote:

All,

Internet Explorer has long been superseded by Microsoft Edge, and even that has recently moved to using Chromium as it's core engine. Version 11 was originally released in 2013, and though Microsoft have committed to supporting it until 2025, as far as I can tell there have been no notable new features in almost it's entire lifetime, and certainly in recent years Microsoft have only been releasing security fixes.

As you can imagine, supporting Internet Explorer has a non-trivial cost to it for the pgAdmin project. Not only do we need to test with it as well as Edge, but we also need to write code, CSS and HTML that is fully compatible with what essentially is a 7 year old browser. By comparison, for all other browsers we typically aim to support releases no more than 2 years old.

I therefore propose that we officially drop support for Internet Explorer. Practically this means that we would not test with it, and anyone reporting a bug with it would be told to use an alternate browser.

Objections/comments please?

Thanks!

--

Dave Page
Blog: http://pgsnake.blogspot.com
Twitter: @pgsnake

EnterpriseDB UK: http://www.enterprisedb.com
The Enterprise PostgreSQL Company

--

Dave Page
Blog: http://pgsnake.blogspot.com
Twitter: @pgsnake

EnterpriseDB UK: http://www.enterprisedb.com
The Enterprise PostgreSQL Company

Dave, 

Seeing that IE isn't standards compliant and not only is not being further developed, but Microsoft is actively discouraging its use, it is probably time to drop support for it.

I would caution *against* using browser analytics as any sort of proxy for use.  Since pgAdmin 4 lacks a UI of its own, I rely on an instance of Chromium (or Vivalidi, or Firefox, depending on the machine) to run pgAdmin under.  In every case, the browser that I am *running* pgAdmin 4 under is *not* the same browser that I use to browse websites, and so would never show up in your analytics.

Just something to keep in mind, 

rik.  

On Tue, Apr 7, 2020 at 8:00 AM Dave Page <dpage@pgadmin.org> wrote:

On Tue, Apr 7, 2020 at 12:41 PM Dave Caughey <caugheyd@gmail.com> wrote:

Check the analytics... I think you'll find dropping it is a non-issue. In my own web service, I found that IE (all versions) constituted only about 1% of my users. 

Good point - 1.9% of the visitors to the website were on IE this week. 1.8 of those were on IE11. We even had one hit from IE5...

By comparison, 72% of users were on Chrome, 13% on Firefox, with 5.5% each for Safari and Edge.

 

So I dropped support for IE (since it was preventing me from fully adopting ES6), and there was not a single complaint from my users. 

Cheers, 

Dave

On Tue., Apr. 7, 2020, 3:36 a.m. Dave Page, <dpage@pgadmin.org> wrote:

All,

Internet Explorer has long been superseded by Microsoft Edge, and even that has recently moved to using Chromium as it's core engine. Version 11 was originally released in 2013, and though Microsoft have committed to supporting it until 2025, as far as I can tell there have been no notable new features in almost it's entire lifetime, and certainly in recent years Microsoft have only been releasing security fixes.

As you can imagine, supporting Internet Explorer has a non-trivial cost to it for the pgAdmin project. Not only do we need to test with it as well as Edge, but we also need to write code, CSS and HTML that is fully compatible with what essentially is a 7 year old browser. By comparison, for all other browsers we typically aim to support releases no more than 2 years old.

I therefore propose that we officially drop support for Internet Explorer. Practically this means that we would not test with it, and anyone reporting a bug with it would be told to use an alternate browser.

Objections/comments please?

Thanks!

--

Dave Page
Blog: http://pgsnake.blogspot.com
Twitter: @pgsnake

EnterpriseDB UK: http://www.enterprisedb.com
The Enterprise PostgreSQL Company

--

Dave Page
Blog: http://pgsnake.blogspot.com
Twitter: @pgsnake

EnterpriseDB UK: http://www.enterprisedb.com
The Enterprise PostgreSQL Company

If its hard to know how many people are actually using Internet Explorer:

You could make the next release of pgAdmin display a message occasionally to
users of Internet Explorer saying that Internet Explorer will no longer be
officially supported in a future version, and when that version comes the
message says now no longer supported.

You can then see how many people contact you about this to express concern.

If its hard to know how many people are actually using Internet Explorer:

You could make the next release of pgAdmin display a message occasionally to
users of Internet Explorer saying that Internet Explorer will no longer be
officially supported in a future version, and when that version comes the
message says now no longer supported.

You can then see how many people contact you about this to express concern.

The patch looks good as much as I understand it, but this raises an important
question:

How should one best handle minority browsers that may be completely modern but
you may not specifically know about them?  Such as the newer crop of browsers
that emphasize stronger privacy or may have fewer identifiers?

While going on a whitelist as the patch essentially does for known good browsers
is conservative, I feel that an alteration would be good.

I propose dividing the browsers/environments into 3 categories, which are
recognized-supported, recognized-unsupported, and unrecognized.

So the unsupported older versions of supported browsers get a stronger message
encouraging a browser switch as they are recognized as unsupported, while
unrecognized browsers get a different weaker message saying they weren't
recognized so we can't determine if they'd work; both can point to the list of
known supported browsers.

Related to this, there could be an application toggle that affects the
unrecognized category where users can basically say, yes I understand you don't
recognize this browser, please hide the warning, or something like that.

Also, it probably goes without saying, but the code/templates will need to be
structured in such a way that the warning message uses about plain as possible
HTML so that if the browser doesn't support displaying the UI in general it can
at least display the message.

-- Darren Duncan

On 2020-04-09 4:36 a.m., Dave Page wrote:
> Hi
>
> On Thu, Apr 9, 2020 at 12:26 AM Darren Duncan wrote:
>
>     If its hard to know how many people are actually using Internet Explorer:
>
>     You could make the next release of pgAdmin display a message occasionally to
>     users of Internet Explorer saying that Internet Explorer will no longer be
>     officially supported in a future version, and when that version comes the
>     message says now no longer supported.
>
>     You can then see how many people contact you about this to express concern.
>
>
> Good idea. I've hacked up a patch to warn users if they're using a deprecated or
> unsupported browser.
>
> CCing Akshay for a review :-)
>
> --
> Dave Page
> Blog: http://pgsnake.blogspot.com
> Twitter: @pgsnake
>
> EnterpriseDB UK: http://www.enterprisedb.com
> The Enterprise PostgreSQL Company

The patch looks good as much as I understand it, but this raises an important
question:

How should one best handle minority browsers that may be completely modern but
you may not specifically know about them?  Such as the newer crop of browsers
that emphasize stronger privacy or may have fewer identifiers?

While going on a whitelist as the patch essentially does for known good browsers
is conservative, I feel that an alteration would be good.

I propose dividing the browsers/environments into 3 categories, which are
recognized-supported, recognized-unsupported, and unrecognized.

So the unsupported older versions of supported browsers get a stronger message
encouraging a browser switch as they are recognized as unsupported, while
unrecognized browsers get a different weaker message saying they weren't
recognized so we can't determine if they'd work; both can point to the list of
known supported browsers.

Related to this, there could be an application toggle that affects the
unrecognized category where users can basically say, yes I understand you don't
recognize this browser, please hide the warning, or something like that.

Also, it probably goes without saying, but the code/templates will need to be
structured in such a way that the warning message uses about plain as possible
HTML so that if the browser doesn't support displaying the UI in general it can
at least display the message.

-- Darren Duncan

On 2020-04-09 4:36 a.m., Dave Page wrote:
> Hi
>
> On Thu, Apr 9, 2020 at 12:26 AM Darren Duncan wrote:
>
>     If its hard to know how many people are actually using Internet Explorer:
>
>     You could make the next release of pgAdmin display a message occasionally to
>     users of Internet Explorer saying that Internet Explorer will no longer be
>     officially supported in a future version, and when that version comes the
>     message says now no longer supported.
>
>     You can then see how many people contact you about this to express concern.
>
>
> Good idea. I've hacked up a patch to warn users if they're using a deprecated or
> unsupported browser.
>
> CCing Akshay for a review :-)
>
> --
> Dave Page
> Blog: http://pgsnake.blogspot.com
> Twitter: @pgsnake
>
> EnterpriseDB UK: http://www.enterprisedb.com
> The Enterprise PostgreSQL Company

On Thu, Apr 9, 2020 at 11:57 PM Darren Duncan <darren@darrenduncan.net> wrote:

The patch looks good as much as I understand it, but this raises an important
question:

How should one best handle minority browsers that may be completely modern but
you may not specifically know about them?  Such as the newer crop of browsers
that emphasize stronger privacy or may have fewer identifiers?

While going on a whitelist as the patch essentially does for known good browsers
is conservative, I feel that an alteration would be good.

I propose dividing the browsers/environments into 3 categories, which are
recognized-supported, recognized-unsupported, and unrecognized.

So the unsupported older versions of supported browsers get a stronger message
encouraging a browser switch as they are recognized as unsupported, while
unrecognized browsers get a different weaker message saying they weren't
recognized so we can't determine if they'd work; both can point to the list of
known supported browsers.

I do agree with this suggestion.

 

Related to this, there could be an application toggle that affects the
unrecognized category where users can basically say, yes I understand you don't
recognize this browser, please hide the warning, or something like that.

Also, it probably goes without saying, but the code/templates will need to be
structured in such a way that the warning message uses about plain as possible
HTML so that if the browser doesn't support displaying the UI in general it can
at least display the message.

-- Darren Duncan

On 2020-04-09 4:36 a.m., Dave Page wrote:
> Hi
>
> On Thu, Apr 9, 2020 at 12:26 AM Darren Duncan wrote:
>
>     If its hard to know how many people are actually using Internet Explorer:
>
>     You could make the next release of pgAdmin display a message occasionally to
>     users of Internet Explorer saying that Internet Explorer will no longer be
>     officially supported in a future version, and when that version comes the
>     message says now no longer supported.
>
>     You can then see how many people contact you about this to express concern.
>
>
> Good idea. I've hacked up a patch to warn users if they're using a deprecated or
> unsupported browser.
>
> CCing Akshay for a review :-)
>
> --
> Dave Page
> Blog: http://pgsnake.blogspot.com
> Twitter: @pgsnake
>
> EnterpriseDB UK: http://www.enterprisedb.com
> The Enterprise PostgreSQL Company

On Thu, Apr 9, 2020 at 11:57 PM Darren Duncan <darren@darrenduncan.net> wrote:

The patch looks good as much as I understand it, but this raises an important
question:

How should one best handle minority browsers that may be completely modern but
you may not specifically know about them?  Such as the newer crop of browsers
that emphasize stronger privacy or may have fewer identifiers?

While going on a whitelist as the patch essentially does for known good browsers
is conservative, I feel that an alteration would be good.

I propose dividing the browsers/environments into 3 categories, which are
recognized-supported, recognized-unsupported, and unrecognized.

So the unsupported older versions of supported browsers get a stronger message
encouraging a browser switch as they are recognized as unsupported, while
unrecognized browsers get a different weaker message saying they weren't
recognized so we can't determine if they'd work; both can point to the list of
known supported browsers.

I do agree with this suggestion.

 

Related to this, there could be an application toggle that affects the
unrecognized category where users can basically say, yes I understand you don't
recognize this browser, please hide the warning, or something like that.

Also, it probably goes without saying, but the code/templates will need to be
structured in such a way that the warning message uses about plain as possible
HTML so that if the browser doesn't support displaying the UI in general it can
at least display the message.

-- Darren Duncan

On 2020-04-09 4:36 a.m., Dave Page wrote:
> Hi
>
> On Thu, Apr 9, 2020 at 12:26 AM Darren Duncan wrote:
>
>     If its hard to know how many people are actually using Internet Explorer:
>
>     You could make the next release of pgAdmin display a message occasionally to
>     users of Internet Explorer saying that Internet Explorer will no longer be
>     officially supported in a future version, and when that version comes the
>     message says now no longer supported.
>
>     You can then see how many people contact you about this to express concern.
>
>
> Good idea. I've hacked up a patch to warn users if they're using a deprecated or
> unsupported browser.
>
> CCing Akshay for a review :-)
>
> --
> Dave Page
> Blog: http://pgsnake.blogspot.com
> Twitter: @pgsnake
>
> EnterpriseDB UK: http://www.enterprisedb.com
> The Enterprise PostgreSQL Company

You have a typo `elif browser != 'chrom'` but otherwise I see no problems with
the patch, thank you. -- Darren Duncan

On 2020-04-14 7:46 a.m., Dave Page wrote:
> Ooops. Thanks for catching that. Here it is.
>
> On Tue, Apr 14, 2020 at 3:45 PM Neel Patel <neel.patel@enterprisedb.com
> <mailto:neel.patel@enterprisedb.com>> wrote:
>
>     Hi Dave,
>
>     Looks like patch is missing in attachment.
>
>     Thanks,
>     Neel Patel
>
>
>     On Tue 14 Apr, 2020, 6:53 PM Dave Page, <dpage@pgadmin.org
>     <mailto:dpage@pgadmin.org>> wrote:
>
>         Here's an updated patch that gives a slightly different message if the
>         browser is unknown vs. unsupported/deprecated. As with the previous
>         patch, the check can be disabled in the config.
>
>         On Fri, Apr 10, 2020 at 5:07 AM Khushboo Vashi
>         <khushboo.vashi@enterprisedb.com
>         <mailto:khushboo.vashi@enterprisedb.com>> wrote:
>
>
>
>             On Thu, Apr 9, 2020 at 11:57 PM Darren Duncan
>             <darren@darrenduncan.net <mailto:darren@darrenduncan.net>> wrote:
>
>                 The patch looks good as much as I understand it, but this raises
>                 an important
>                 question:
>
>                 How should one best handle minority browsers that may be
>                 completely modern but
>                 you may not specifically know about them?  Such as the newer
>                 crop of browsers
>                 that emphasize stronger privacy or may have fewer identifiers?
>
>                 While going on a whitelist as the patch essentially does for
>                 known good browsers
>                 is conservative, I feel that an alteration would be good.
>
>                 I propose dividing the browsers/environments into 3 categories,
>                 which are
>                 recognized-supported, recognized-unsupported, and unrecognized.
>
>
>                 So the unsupported older versions of supported browsers get a
>                 stronger message
>                 encouraging a browser switch as they are recognized as
>                 unsupported, while
>                 unrecognized browsers get a different weaker message saying they
>                 weren't
>                 recognized so we can't determine if they'd work; both can point
>                 to the list of
>                 known supported browsers.
>
>             I do agree with this suggestion.
>
>                 Related to this, there could be an application toggle that
>                 affects the
>                 unrecognized category where users can basically say, yes I
>                 understand you don't
>                 recognize this browser, please hide the warning, or something
>                 like that.
>
>                 Also, it probably goes without saying, but the code/templates
>                 will need to be
>                 structured in such a way that the warning message uses about
>                 plain as possible
>                 HTML so that if the browser doesn't support displaying the UI in
>                 general it can
>                 at least display the message.
>
>                 -- Darren Duncan
>
>                 On 2020-04-09 4:36 a.m., Dave Page wrote:
>                  > Hi
>                  >
>                  > On Thu, Apr 9, 2020 at 12:26 AM Darren Duncan wrote:
>                  >
>                  >     If its hard to know how many people are actually using
>                 Internet Explorer:
>                  >
>                  >     You could make the next release of pgAdmin display a
>                 message occasionally to
>                  >     users of Internet Explorer saying that Internet Explorer
>                 will no longer be
>                  >     officially supported in a future version, and when that
>                 version comes the
>                  >     message says now no longer supported.
>                  >
>                  >     You can then see how many people contact you about this
>                 to express concern.
>                  >
>                  >
>                  > Good idea. I've hacked up a patch to warn users if they're
>                 using a deprecated or
>                  > unsupported browser.
>                  >
>                  > CCing Akshay for a review :-)
>                  >
>                  > --
>                  > Dave Page
>                  > Blog: http://pgsnake.blogspot.com
>                  > Twitter: @pgsnake
>                  >
>                  > EnterpriseDB UK: http://www.enterprisedb.com
>                  > The Enterprise PostgreSQL Company
>
>
>
>
>
>         --
>         Dave Page
>         Blog: http://pgsnake.blogspot.com
>         Twitter: @pgsnake
>
>         EnterpriseDB UK: http://www.enterprisedb.com
>         The Enterprise PostgreSQL Company
>
>
>
> --
> Dave Page
> Blog: http://pgsnake.blogspot.com
> Twitter: @pgsnake
>
> EnterpriseDB UK: http://www.enterprisedb.com
> The Enterprise PostgreSQL Company

You have a typo `elif browser != 'chrom'` but otherwise I see no problems with
the patch, thank you. -- Darren Duncan

On 2020-04-14 7:46 a.m., Dave Page wrote:
> Ooops. Thanks for catching that. Here it is.
>
> On Tue, Apr 14, 2020 at 3:45 PM Neel Patel <neel.patel@enterprisedb.com
> <mailto:neel.patel@enterprisedb.com>> wrote:
>
>     Hi Dave,
>
>     Looks like patch is missing in attachment.
>
>     Thanks,
>     Neel Patel
>
>
>     On Tue 14 Apr, 2020, 6:53 PM Dave Page, <dpage@pgadmin.org
>     <mailto:dpage@pgadmin.org>> wrote:
>
>         Here's an updated patch that gives a slightly different message if the
>         browser is unknown vs. unsupported/deprecated. As with the previous
>         patch, the check can be disabled in the config.
>
>         On Fri, Apr 10, 2020 at 5:07 AM Khushboo Vashi
>         <khushboo.vashi@enterprisedb.com
>         <mailto:khushboo.vashi@enterprisedb.com>> wrote:
>
>
>
>             On Thu, Apr 9, 2020 at 11:57 PM Darren Duncan
>             <darren@darrenduncan.net <mailto:darren@darrenduncan.net>> wrote:
>
>                 The patch looks good as much as I understand it, but this raises
>                 an important
>                 question:
>
>                 How should one best handle minority browsers that may be
>                 completely modern but
>                 you may not specifically know about them?  Such as the newer
>                 crop of browsers
>                 that emphasize stronger privacy or may have fewer identifiers?
>
>                 While going on a whitelist as the patch essentially does for
>                 known good browsers
>                 is conservative, I feel that an alteration would be good.
>
>                 I propose dividing the browsers/environments into 3 categories,
>                 which are
>                 recognized-supported, recognized-unsupported, and unrecognized.
>
>
>                 So the unsupported older versions of supported browsers get a
>                 stronger message
>                 encouraging a browser switch as they are recognized as
>                 unsupported, while
>                 unrecognized browsers get a different weaker message saying they
>                 weren't
>                 recognized so we can't determine if they'd work; both can point
>                 to the list of
>                 known supported browsers.
>
>             I do agree with this suggestion.
>
>                 Related to this, there could be an application toggle that
>                 affects the
>                 unrecognized category where users can basically say, yes I
>                 understand you don't
>                 recognize this browser, please hide the warning, or something
>                 like that.
>
>                 Also, it probably goes without saying, but the code/templates
>                 will need to be
>                 structured in such a way that the warning message uses about
>                 plain as possible
>                 HTML so that if the browser doesn't support displaying the UI in
>                 general it can
>                 at least display the message.
>
>                 -- Darren Duncan
>
>                 On 2020-04-09 4:36 a.m., Dave Page wrote:
>                  > Hi
>                  >
>                  > On Thu, Apr 9, 2020 at 12:26 AM Darren Duncan wrote:
>                  >
>                  >     If its hard to know how many people are actually using
>                 Internet Explorer:
>                  >
>                  >     You could make the next release of pgAdmin display a
>                 message occasionally to
>                  >     users of Internet Explorer saying that Internet Explorer
>                 will no longer be
>                  >     officially supported in a future version, and when that
>                 version comes the
>                  >     message says now no longer supported.
>                  >
>                  >     You can then see how many people contact you about this
>                 to express concern.
>                  >
>                  >
>                  > Good idea. I've hacked up a patch to warn users if they're
>                 using a deprecated or
>                  > unsupported browser.
>                  >
>                  > CCing Akshay for a review :-)
>                  >
>                  > --
>                  > Dave Page
>                  > Blog: http://pgsnake.blogspot.com
>                  > Twitter: @pgsnake
>                  >
>                  > EnterpriseDB UK: http://www.enterprisedb.com
>                  > The Enterprise PostgreSQL Company
>
>
>
>
>
>         --
>         Dave Page
>         Blog: http://pgsnake.blogspot.com
>         Twitter: @pgsnake
>
>         EnterpriseDB UK: http://www.enterprisedb.com
>         The Enterprise PostgreSQL Company
>
>
>
> --
> Dave Page
> Blog: http://pgsnake.blogspot.com
> Twitter: @pgsnake
>
> EnterpriseDB UK: http://www.enterprisedb.com
> The Enterprise PostgreSQL Company