Proposal: Jenkins Browser Support policy updates

[Oleg Nenashev]

Hi all,

There was recently a question about Jenkins browser support policy raised in the chats. Currently the policy is hosted on Wiki (here), and the policy looks to be REALLY old. E.g. we say that Safari 6+ are fully supported, ouch. It does not look like we had any major changes since the inception of the policy in 2014. I have created a pull request to move the policy to jenkins.io, and I would like to make some changes to actualize it.

What do I propose?

• Chrome, Firefox, IE, Safari
• Level 1: 
• "Latest regular release, latest minor release / patch level"
• Level 2: 
• Previous patches of the latest regular release
• Latest minor release / patch level  for the "Version -1" 
• Level 3:
• All other versions
• Other browsers, including mobile versions, Chromium, Microsoft EDGE, etc.:
• Level 2: Latest regular release, latest minor release / patch level
• Level 3: All other versions

This policy should be somewhat aligned with the current ATH state. IIUC we test only Firefox now, and there is a PR by Oliver Gondza to run tests on Chrome instead (here)

WDYT?

Best regards,

Oleg

[Richard Bywater]

Personally I think Microsoft Edge (Chromium) should be Level 1 as it will be coming out in January and, as far as I know, will be the default browser for Windows 10 (or at least be used quite a bit). I'd also say that given its Chromium based I'd include that and Chromium together along with Chrome. 

I'd also suggest dropping IE although perhaps that's slightly too early?

Richard.

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[Oliver Gondža]

On 15/11/2019 10.17, Oleg Nenashev wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> There was recently a question about Jenkins browser support policy
> raised in the chats. Currently the policy is hosted on Wiki (here

> <https://wiki.jenkins.io/display/JENKINS/Browser+Compatibility+Matrix>),

> and the policy looks to be REALLY old. E.g. we say that Safari 6+ are
> fully supported, ouch. It does not look like we had any major changes
> since the inception of the policy in 2014. I have created a pull reques

> <https://github.com/jenkins-infra/jenkins.io/pull/2649>t to move the

> policy to jenkins.io, and I would like to make some changes to actualize it.
>
> What do I propose?
>

> * Chrome, Firefox, IE, Safari
> o Level 1:
> + "Latest regular release, latest minor release / patch level"
> o Level 2:
> + Previous patches of the latest regular release
> + Latest minor release / patch level  for the "Version -1"
> o Level 3:
> + All other versions
> * Other browsers, including mobile versions, Chromium, Microsoft EDGE,
> etc.:
> o Level 2: Latest regular release, latest minor release / patch level
> o Level 3: All other versions

>
>
> This policy should be somewhat aligned with the current ATH state. IIUC
> we test only Firefox now, and there is a PR by Oliver Gondza to run
> tests on Chrome instead (here

> <https://github.com/jenkinsci/acceptance-test-harness/pulls>)
>
> WDYT?

It makes sense to me up date it this way - especially getting rid of the
explicit versions so this does not get outdated so easily.

Speaking of ATH, there is not enough hands to mirror the support matrix
and test the UI on all supported browsers - not even those from level 1.
We have started tentatively looking into replacing FF with chrome as the
only browser we test with to (hopefully) improve the stability and
(certainly) improve the test relevance.

--
oliver

[Björn Pedersen]

Hi,

sounds reasonable in general.

What  another project (https://github.com/indico/indico/releases/tag/v2.2):

Drop support for Internet Explorer 11 and other outdated or discontinued browser versions. Indico shows a warning message when accessed using such a browser. The latest list of supported browsers can be found in the README, but generally Indico now supports the last two versions of each major browser (determined at release time), plus the current Firefox ESR.

So support one  version back at level 1 ( this means also that before using bleeding edge browser features they have settled for at least on release).

I suggest to also add a js warning plugin (e.g. https://github.com/outdatedbrowser/outdated-browser) to jenkins to give the users a better feedback for unsupported browsers.

Björn

[Baptiste Mathus]

+1 on the update of the policy. All for dropping explicit "support" for older browsers. (support

I love the idea to actually have something like an Administrative warning to tell users that they may see UI quirks given the browser they're using. And that they should feel free to report them iff these quirks are also present on latest browser versions.

+1 on supporting temporarily only the very latest version of IE, and maybe have a blurb saying this is planned to be discontinued given MS plans anyway to invest into Edge instead.

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[Daniel Beck]

I think Firefox ESR would make sense to support as well. Its baseline is never older than a year IIUC, so should be feasible to have it be considered supported.

Showing warnings on the UI when using an unsupported browser would probably be fairly straightforward as well, and help to inform users. Perhaps we even distinguish between "outdated based on policy" and "outdated based on features actually used in core or popular plugins", but that may end up being too much effort to maintain.

Does it actually make sense to still support IE?

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Daniel Beck
Senior Software Engineer
CloudBees, Inc.

[Matt Sicker]

FWIW, I've written any new JS/HTML/CSS according to caniuse.com and their base line supported level, though that might be fairly conservative (not as conservative as the current Jenkins wiki, though!)

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Matt Sicker
Senior Software Engineer, CloudBees

[Oleg Nenashev]

Personally I think Microsoft Edge (Chromium) should be Level 1 as it will be coming out in January and, as far as I know, will be the default browser for Windows 10 (or at least be used quite a bit). I'd also say that given its Chromium based I'd include that and Chromium together along with Chrome. 

What if we add it as Level 2 support for now until it is released?

I agree we would be interested to support it though it should not be a big deal taking the engine under the hood.

+1 on supporting temporarily only the very latest version of IE, and maybe have a blurb saying this is planned to be discontinued given MS plans anyway to invest into Edge instead.

@Baptiste Do you mean Level 1 support for IE 11 and Level 3 for older versions (w/o -1 version support)?

Sounds reasonable to me.

I suggest to also add a js warning plugin (e.g. https://github.com/outdatedbrowser/outdated-browser) to jenkins to give the users a better feedback for unsupported browsers.

+1 for any warnings or administrativemonitors if anyone is willing to contribute them. Thanks in advance!

 

I think Firefox ESR would make sense to support as well

+1 for keeping it as Level 1 as it currently is.

On Friday, November 15, 2019 at 4:24:12 PM UTC+1, Matt Sicker wrote:

FWIW, I've written any new JS/HTML/CSS according to caniuse.com and their base line supported level, though that might be fairly conservative (not as conservative as the current Jenkins wiki, though!)

On Fri, Nov 15, 2019 at 8:15 AM Daniel Beck <db...@cloudbees.com> wrote:

I think Firefox ESR would make sense to support as well. Its baseline is never older than a year IIUC, so should be feasible to have it be considered supported.

Showing warnings on the UI when using an unsupported browser would probably be fairly straightforward as well, and help to inform users. Perhaps we even distinguish between "outdated based on policy" and "outdated based on features actually used in core or popular plugins", but that may end up being too much effort to maintain.

Does it actually make sense to still support IE?

On Fri, Nov 15, 2019 at 10:17 AM Oleg Nenashev <o.v.n...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi all,

There was recently a question about Jenkins browser support policy raised in the chats. Currently the policy is hosted on Wiki (here), and the policy looks to be REALLY old. E.g. we say that Safari 6+ are fully supported, ouch. It does not look like we had any major changes since the inception of the policy in 2014. I have created a pull request to move the policy to jenkins.io, and I would like to make some changes to actualize it.

What do I propose?

• Chrome, Firefox, IE, Safari
• Level 1: 
• "Latest regular release, latest minor release / patch level"
• Level 2: 
• Previous patches of the latest regular release
• Latest minor release / patch level  for the "Version -1" 
• Level 3:
• All other versions
• Other browsers, including mobile versions, Chromium, Microsoft EDGE, etc.:
• Level 2: Latest regular release, latest minor release / patch level
• Level 3: All other versions

This policy should be somewhat aligned with the current ATH state. IIUC we test only Firefox now, and there is a PR by Oliver Gondza to run tests on Chrome instead (here)

WDYT?

Best regards,

Oleg

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Daniel Beck
Senior Software Engineer
CloudBees, Inc.

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[Baptiste Mathus]

On Mon, Nov 18, 2019 at 2:03 PM Oleg Nenashev <o.v.ne...@gmail.com> wrote:

Personally I think Microsoft Edge (Chromium) should be Level 1 as it will be coming out in January and, as far as I know, will be the default browser for Windows 10 (or at least be used quite a bit). I'd also say that given its Chromium based I'd include that and Chromium together along with Chrome. 

What if we add it as Level 2 support for now until it is released?

I agree we would be interested to support it though it should not be a big deal taking the engine under the hood.

+1 on supporting temporarily only the very latest version of IE, and maybe have a blurb saying this is planned to be discontinued given MS plans anyway to invest into Edge instead.

@Baptiste Do you mean Level 1 support for IE 11 and Level 3 for older versions (w/o -1 version support)?

Sounds reasonable to me.

Yes. IE11 should be the only version we put in Level 1 IMO, even more after having re-read https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Explorer_11 but we should probably put a blurb saying Edge is to be preferred and IE11 will likely soon be Level 2, given MS plans https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Edge and that Edge is even already default browser on Windows 10 (and later?!).

Any older IE release should be Level 2 max, Level 3 maybe, I don't feel that strongly.

 

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[Oleg Nenashev]

Implemented all the discussed changes in  https://github.com/jenkins-infra/jenkins.io/pull/2659 .

Will appreciate reviews

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[Oleg Nenashev]

Since we have a Governance meeting tomorrow, I have added this topic to the agenda so that we can formally confirm the changes

https://wiki.jenkins.io/display/JENKINS/Governance+Meeting+Agenda#GovernanceMeetingAgenda-November20

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[Oleg Nenashev]

The policy change has been approved by the Governance meeting.

Taking the consensus here, I went ahead and merged https://github.com/jenkins-infra/jenkins.io/pulls

Thanks all!