![]() Even in 3rd world countries people who can afford blogging are contracted with hosting providers that are able to upgrade even to PHP 7.1 if really needed. But they again just are not willing to drop PHP 5.2 which really limits even the functionality and code quality of WP besides being a great security risk. ![]() Dropping those browsers will not improve anything on WordPress itself, but will make the life of theme developers easier. Well, it was highest time that not marketing bullshit would make a decision! Outdated browsers mean just minor security risks compared to the security risks of outdated PHP versions. But in the meantime they are still hesitating to raise PHP requirements. That is why it was highest time to drop support for these. What they are trying to tell us is that dropping support for IE 8,9 and 10 will make it possible to develop WP further and this decision will make WP safer as well. The 5.1% on PHP 5.2 represents millions of users who would need to cross a significant hurdle into order to stay current with the latest version of WordPress. The task of updating a browser to the latest version was designed to be easy for users, but upgrading PHP versions is still somewhat complicated for those who are not receiving help from their hosting companies. In March 2015, WordPress stats estimated PHP 5.2 usage at 16.6%, but that number has dropped steadily to 5.1% today. Naturally, the topic of raising minimum browser requirements resulted in developers lobbying to drop support for PHP 5.2, which reached end of life more than six years ago. Developers who do client work can also refer to WordPress’ IE support policy when pressured by clients to support insecure browsers. Focusing on browsers that still receive security updates is a better use of open source contributors’ time and resources. The decision to drop support for IE 8, 9, and 10 was met with celebration from the WordPress developer community. “Government agency websites similarly see negligible traffic from IE < 11.” government agency running a version of IE less than 11,” WordPress lead developer Andrew Nacin commented on the announcement. As this trend of declining desktop usage continues, IE will likely be buried within a couple of years. October 2016 marked the first month in history that mobile and tablet traffic exceeded desktop usage worldwide. IE marketshare has been shrinking as mobile device usage has gone up. Global IE usage has declined from 7.44% in March 2016 to 4.18% in March 2017. Mullenweg confirmed that the next versions of TinyMCE will no support older IE versions. Some capabilities in wp-admin may be more limited. WordPress will not stop working entirely in these browsers, but after the 4.8 release contributors will no longer test new features against older versions of IE. The following are numbers for global IE usage published by StatCounter’s GlobalStats, which Desrosiers said are nearly identical to ’s numbers: In an effort to determine how many people are still using these insecure and obsolete browsers, Jonathan Desrosiers collected data from three different sources. “Depending on how you count it, those browsers combined are either around 3% or under 1% of total users, but either way they’ve fallen below the threshold where it’s helpful for WordPress to continue testing and developing against.” “I realize that folks still running these browsers are probably stuck with them because of something out of their control, like being at a library or something,” Mullenweg said. Mullenweg said that attempting to continue supporting these browsers is holding back WordPress development. Microsoft discontinued support for IE 8, 9, and 10 in January 2016, which means these versions no longer receive security updates. Core contributors have been discussing browser support for the past two months in relationship to setting technical requirements for the new editor. Over the weekend, Matt Mullenweg announced that the upcoming WordPress 4.8 release will drop support for IE versions 8, 9, and 10.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |