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1
Sezr
2y

Please support old web browser versions for all eternity.

I hate it when I open a site like SoundCloud one day and am greeted with a "we no longer support your browser" notice. Now I am forced to update my browser to a new version with removed features. On Android, Chrome sometimes crashes due to an apparent memory leak, so I have to go back to Samsung Internet, which does not work with some sites. Also, the Samsung clipboard manager (which can hold up to 20 items) is only available on Samsung Internet, not Chrome or Firefox.
I also have to update the browser on my live USB bootable stick because sites stop supporting it. Any browser starting in 2015 (ECMA script 6) should be supported until at least 2050 so that I never have to fear that a site one day spontaneously stops working on my browser.

I would like to browse the Internet forever without having to ever worry about pages to stop working one day. Browser vendors might also deprecate support for devices and operating systems. Old devices also have replaceable batteries and are easier to repair. I don't want be forced to buy new devices that are difficult and expensive to repair.

rant

planned obsolescence
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  • 7
    2y
    I get where you're coming from, but c'mon, get down to earth. Think of the immense pain that it would cause us poor devs 😅
  • 12
    2y
    Ah yes good idea to use an old browser with 10 gazillion vulnerabilities
  • 0
    2y
    @ScriptCoded ECMA script 5 would be difficult, but "c'mon", ECMA script 6 should be doable.

    Wikipedia is amazingly still largely ECMA 5 (2009) compatible as of 2022! The rich text editor (visual editor) is ECMA 5, but apparently not the video player. But that falls back to the browser-bundled HTML 5 player.

    Even Everipedia and YouTube's mobile site are ECMA 5 compatible in 2022! Vimeo was until less than 2 years ago.
  • 0
    2y
    Just use Firefox, and if Samsung's clipboard manager is built into anything other than the virtual keyboard and OS context menu which is available anywhere that's a problem for Samsung to solve.
  • 2
    2y
    I get what you're saying about device support, but webdev is a 30 years old craft, asking devs to support primitive iterations of the standards is hopeless.
  • 1
    2y
    Asking for support of ancient browsers seems like backward thinking. It’s up to developers and users to stay up to speed. The rest of us shouldn’t have to pay for their laziness
  • 5
    2y
    Supporting old browsers not only becomes a security problem after some time since you have to support insecure standards but it adds costs.

    So unless the users of old browsers are a big enough customer group its not good for the business anyway.

    And the reason features disappear from browsers can be many, security, not used, to hard to keep.
  • 4
    2y
    There was a big moment of clarity in web dev a few years back, when someone pointed out that we were only being held back by the need to support old browsers because... we continued to support old browsers. Get yourself a modern browser, for free, now.
  • 1
    2y
    No
  • 1
    2y
    @Sezr man, we waited for ES6 so damn LONG, you'd better update your browser to support it. And I understand full well if you don't like how much ES versions are produced now every year, but we at least can transpile to ES6 and call it a wonderful day.

    Does SoundCloud decline your ES6-supporting browser or you used a pile of ES5 garbage, I wonder?
  • 1
    2y
    @Sezr Wikipedia doesn’t have that much interactivity… nor style, therefore its a bad example!

    Sure, you can say its successful, but it is easy to be successful when you have no competitors and you are not selling a product. (Well, actually… given Wikipedia asks frequently for funds we could say they are not successful…)
  • 0
    2y
    @lbfalvy Actually it's already been solved a while ago when Android got a built-in clipboard solution, but you need to either get a new(er) phone, or at least install AOSP system on your old phone to get it. So that part's quite easy to fix. Being a lazy fuck who doesn't even bother to download a new ISO for their live USB every year or so, well, that's pretty fucking hard to fix...
  • 0
    2y
    @hitko Does AOSP have Android 2 releases? If so I might also have a couple plastic bricks to revive.
  • 0
    2y
    That is to say, does it tend to support devices that are older than Android 2?
  • 1
    2y
    @piratefox Wikipedia is very successful in fundraising: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
  • 1
    2y
    gboard also has a clipboard history btw
  • 1
    2y
    @sbiewald it is! I expressed myself very poorly, what I meant is that it’s not successful for a “classical market” standard where you have to sell a product, compete etc etc…

    Fortunately as long as it remains free there will be no wipediaki (or any other silly name) to compete and we won’t have 10 identical versions of the same thing barrelling info behind paywalls and spending stupid amount of money trying to diss the competitors which give you the exact same infos but which are “lame” cause they don’t have funny animations and fucking scroll blocking sections where js steals your scroll cause fuck you user.
  • 0
    2y
    Bad bait
  • 3
    2y
    Please support old web browser versions for all eternity.

    okay. you show me how you make a modern website run on IE 1.0

    then we'll talk.
  • 2
    2y
    @tosensei why stay there, revive mosaic :)

    And having actually worked with IE 1.0 I can definitely say it would be impossible, if for no other reason the lack of js and even in netscape 2 where js was born the DOM was read only/static, so at most you could hide an element and change colors.

    IE did not support js until version 3.0.
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