Supported browsers
Our approach to browser support is pragmatic. You should support as many of your users as possible, while still developing in an efficient manner. Graceful degradation is encouraged, but breaking is not.
By using our component library as updated as possible, you will make sure that you get a good head-start on giving the best experiences to your users.
Supported browsers and operating systems
Does your team have specific needs?
Feel free to support other browsers, platforms, or devices in your team. Look at the data, and listen to your users. Using your analytics tools and data, you know your users best.
Maintaining an updated and detailed overview of all browsers, versions, operating systems, and devices, is close to impossible. The scene changes way too fast. These days, users are also better at updating their software. Also, many apps and softwares even update themselves. And it is usually difficult to keep running outdated software.
Therefore, we will not specify any large table of version numbers and OS-combinations to support.
Latest and greatest (and next-to-greatest)
The general rule is to support updated operating systems, devices, and all major browsers on these. This means, the most recent stable releases of all software, and the next-to-last major version of the largest operating systems.
Graceful degradation
Add visually appealing and enhancing effects for the latest browsers, that pleases and adds to the user experience, but is not critical for those that cannot experience them.
We encourage the practice of graceful degradation. Add visually appealing and enhancing effects (gradients, animations, transitions, visual details) for the latest browsers that adds to the user experience, but that older software users can live without. The service must work as expected for all users. Never break the UX for an updated, or outdated, browser.
Adoption of new techniques
JavaScript, HTML, and CSS, is ever evolving. Continuing on the same logic, we should make life easier for developers, making them more efficient, while still not breaking the UX for as none, or as close to it as possible. This means you can adopt modern CSS and HTML, as long as it enhances the UX, and that the adoption doesn't make page useless for some users.
For example:
- Adopt early: enhancements like border-radius, radial-gradient, transitions and animations.
- Wait with: Native nested CSS rules, animate to height auto, CSS native if, sub-grids, initial style, Web Components.
- Safe to use: WebP, SVG, has(), and more.
Rendering engines
If a page runs great in Chrome, it will work great in Edge, Opera and Vivaldi too.
To be technically correct, a browser doesn't really have much to say on how a page renders, but the rendering engine has everything to say. The engine that paints HTML and CSS into an usable web page.
Today we have many browsers, but there is really only three major rendering engines in play:
- Blink (used in Chrome, Edge, Samsung Internet, Opera, Vivaldi, Brave, and more)
- WebKit (used in Apple Safari on Mac and hand-held)
- Gecko (used in Firefox).
When testing, it is key to test for these three engines, not all the different browsers. If a page runs great in Chrome, it will work great in Edge, Opera and Vivaldi too.
Accessibility
Never deliberately brake accessibility.
At the core, we aim for very high accessibility standards, they are not to be broken for any reason.
Operating systems and browsers
iOS
Support the latest version of Apple's iOS, as well as the previous one as many don't upgrade OS instantly.
For browsers, you should support latest Apple Safari, Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome on desktop. On hand-held, it is sufficient to support Safari and Chrome. Be sure to test landscape-mode.
Windows
On Windows, support the latest version, Windows 11. Support only Windows 10 if many of your users are still on it. There is no meaning in supporting Windows 7.
As for browsers, the latest Microsoft Edge is important, as well as Chrome and Firefox. Bare in mind that Edge now uses the same rendering-engine as Chrome. This means that if you thoroughly test on Chrome, you don't have to test equally thorough on Edge.
Android
For Android devices you should support the latest Chrome, Firefox, and also Samsung Internet, which is used fairly frequently on Samsung-devices (with the largest Android user base).
Linux, Chrome OS
Due to limited usage by our customers, you are not required to do testing or specific adjustments for these operating systems.