Hi James,
At the end of 2015, prompted by the news that Microsoft would only be supporting the most current version of Internet Explorer available for a supported operating system, I wrote a browser support statement for the NHM website (www.nhm.ac.uk). The general rule of thumb was as follows:
"We will follow a similar model where we will support (i.e. test in) any of the following browsers that contribute more than 1% usage by our visitors, as long as the version is supported by their vendor: Internet Explorer, Microsoft Edge, Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, Safari. In the case where multiple versions of a particular browser are being used by more than 1% of our visitors, we will support the current stable browser version, plus the two versions prior to our best endeavours."
The most important thing to note is that it is all based on usage data - I worked with our Digital Media Analyst to ensure that we have a set of metrics to support the decisions we make regarding browsers and devices that we support. Our browser statement is reviewed roughly every 3 months and the usage data is generated every month. For non-IE browsers, we generally find that our users are using the most up-to-date versions and for IE browsers, we are finding now that pretty much all of our users are on IE11 (and a small amount are on some version of Edge). As a developer who has worked through the Internet Explorer days, it was a great relief to be able to not worry about supporting IE9 and below, knowing that our users wouldn't be affected!
In terms of features that are implemented e.g. using the latest and greatest CSS - caniuse.com is our go-to reference and we make sure that our users will not be affected in a negative way if they don't have the latest browser version.
It goes without saying that of course, some sections of the website or certain projects have different browser support rules depending on usage data and we do review on a case-by-case basis. Another thing to mention is that we had quite a few questions about support for IE Compatibility Mode - which we do not support - and neither do Microsoft (I believe).
Hope that helps - very happy to discuss further and to share our browser statement with you if it will help at all.
Thanks
Theo
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