July 11, 2008 - Comments Off on theMechanism’s browser support

theMechanism’s browser support

theMechanism follows Yahoo!'s Graded Browser Support and agrees with the GBS approach:

In the first 10 years of professional web development, back in the early '90s, browser support was binary: Do you—or don't you—support a given browser? When the answer was "No," user access to the site was often actively prevented. In the years following IE5's release in 1998, professional web designers and developers have become accustomed to asking at the outset of any new undertaking, "Do I have to support Netscape 4.x browsers for this project?"

By contrast, in modern web development we must support all browsers. Choosing to exclude a segment of users is inappropriate, and, with a "Graded Browser Support" strategy, unnecessary.

The two principal concepts of GBS are a broader and more reasonable definition of "support" and the notion of "grades" of support.

Definition of support

Support does not mean that everybody gets the same thing. Expecting two users using different browser software to have an identical experience fails to embrace or acknowledge the heterogeneous essence of the Web. In fact, requiring the same experience for all users creates a barrier to participation. Availability and accessibility of content should be our key priority.

Progressive enhancement is the method used to provide different experiences to different browsers: the rich, interactive experience is built on an accessible core.

Grades of support

Per Yahoo!:

C-grade
C-grade browsers are identified, incapable, antiquated and rare. QA tests a sampling of C-grade browsers, and bugs are addressed with high priority.
A-grade
A-grade browsers are identified, capable, modern and common. QA tests all A-grade browsers, and bugs are addressed with high priority.
X-grade
X-grade browsers are generally unknown, assumed to be capable, modern, and rare or fringe. QA does not test, and bugs are not opened against X-grade browsers.

The one difference between theMechanism and Yahoo! is that theMechanism does not test or open bugs against C-grade browsers.

Read the entire Graded Browser Support document at Yahoo!: http://developer.yahoo.com/yui/articles/gbs/

Published by: jeffreybarke in The Programming Mechanism
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