On Mon, Feb 1, 2010 at 1:28 PM, David Gerard <dger...@gmail.com> wrote: > On 1 February 2010 15:43, Aryeh Gregor <simetrical+wikil...@gmail.com> wrote: >> On Mon, Feb 1, 2010 at 10:14 AM, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dal...@gmail.com> >> wrote: > >>> It's not just the clutter, though, it's the effort of maintaining it. > >> I don't suggest we maintain it. Just leave it alone. If other >> changes happen to cause IE5 to break, then remove it, but don't remove >> *existing* IE5 support as long as IE5 still happens to work with no >> extra effort on our part. > > > Yes. If someone actually notices something bitrotting and they tell > us, that's excellent. If they don't, there you go. > > That said, there must be *someone* on this list bloody-minded enough > to test Wikipedia in every possible browser and file bugs and patches > accordingly ...
It shouldn't be a question of bloddy-mindedness. The rotting of support for a single browser version would potential shut out many tens of thousands of users. It's something worth dedicating some resources to. Simply verifying functionality with all the *popular* browsers and platforms is already burdensome. Doing it well (and consistently) requires some infrastructure, such as a collection of virtualized client machines. Once that kind of infrastructure is in place and well oiled the marginal cost of adding a few more test cases should not be especially great. The core of Wikipedia functionality is plain text with a smattering of images in common formats. I can think of no reason that this basic reading functionality for IE 5.x and the like should go away for the foreseeable future but if nothing else, knowing that it doesn't work would be a good thing. _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
