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Comment by z3t4 | Hacker News Reader

The fun part in web dev is to make sure everything works on the 0.5% non mainstream browser/platforms. Only supporting 99.5% is boring.

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A popup "your OS browser combination is not supported, some things may not work" is a much less nuclear option.

Things fail in the weirdest ways in unsupported environments though, it’s not like the “make transfer” button doesn’t work, it’s more like it might not even show up in the first place. Having 99% of your website work and the last 1% not work is a dealbreaker in many cases, and these “the site may not work for you based on your OS” banners lead the user into thinking it does work 100% if it works in 99% of the cases.

Not saying this is the way it should be, just saying that “doing your best” to allow unsupported platforms often leads to a terrible and confusing user experience.

Unlikely. This is a browser. If it's going to fail, it won't be some js somewhere. It's going to be the whole thing.

That's not true. All it takes is using an unsupported CSS rule for something to simply disappear from the page under certain circumstances. As a recent example, I found out some of our users couldn't find a specific button in an application. It still existed, but we used the zoom property to make it stand out more, which for some reason is only supported in Chrome.

If you know which parts will not work in advance. What if the "Send $$$" button does not appear due to a CSS misfire?

eslint-plugin-compat [0] and stylelint-no-unsupported-browser-features [1] can help you know when you're using an unsupported browser feature.

[0] https://github.com/amilajack/eslint-plugin-compat

[1] https://github.com/ismay/stylelint-no-unsupported-browser-fe...

I would not want a money transfer to “not work” and end up moving $500,000 rather than $500.

How about assuming it works until users report it does not?

It is to a point, but then it just becomes painful. If you want to keep a good user experience for modern browsers while supporting ancient ones, you'll probably be writing at least all your layouts twice.

You guys are getting a good user experience from your banks?

I am since reverse engineering their mobile app protocol and developing a Python library for it :)

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