Hello all,
Starting in April 2023, MediaWiki will end Grade A support for browsers that
do not implement ES6 JavaScript.[0] This mostly affects the small number of
Internet Explorer 11 users. A very small number of iOS users who have not
upgraded to iOS 10 (released in 2017) are also affected.
Users with these browsers will still be able to browse and contribute to the
projects. Enhanced features will become unavailable. For example, the 2010
wikitext editor will not appear, scripts and gadgets will not operate, and
notification buttons will take you to a page rather than open a pop-out.
This change will affect fewer than 0.1% of page views to Wikimedia wikis. We
previously raised the standard (from ES3 to ES5) in April 2017.[1]
Providing JavaScript for IE 11 and other ES5 browsers adds a significant
maintenance burden. It also hinders site speed for all users. Microsoft
ended its official support for Internet Explorer 11 in June 2022,[2] and
entirely removed it from Windows 10 in February 2023.[3]
This change will land in the development branch used on all Wikimedia wikis
this April, to be released as part of MediaWiki 1.41 around November 2023.
Please help carry this message into your communities.
(Tech News will announce this change as well.)
For details about the JavaScript-less experience, see
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Compatibility#Browsers
[0]
https://caniuse.com/es6 listing browser support for ES6
[1]
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T128115
[2]
https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2021/05/19/the-future-of-intern…
[3]
https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/windows-it-pro-blog/internet-explore…
Yours,
--
*James D. Forrester* (he/him <http://pronoun.is/he> or they/themself
<http://pronoun.is/they/.../themself>)
Wikimedia Foundation <https://wikimediafoundation.org/>