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Who is this mythical end-user with an old browser? Because they don’t show up in browser usage statistics.

https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-version-market-share

Chrome is evergreen, even on Android. Safari, after a bit of a fallow period, is updated fairly aggressively, and though it’s still coupled with OS updates, it’s no longer married to the annual x.0 releases.

Mind you, I still believe, and practice, you should write semantic HTML with progressive enhancement. But at the same time, I absolutely do not think you should go out of your way to test for some ancient version of Safari running on a first-generation iPad Pro—use basic webdev best practices, and don’t spend time worrying that container queries aren’t going to work for that sliver of the market.



Browsers may be self-updating but hardware is not. You can't just download more RAM or a faster CPU.


Most people auto update their software or they don’t at all. What they don’t do is buy a brand new laptop as soon as it’s out. And the one they have is a cheap one from HP or Dell. To know their pain, try to use one of these.


I've got an iPad Air 2 running iOS 15.8. My user agent will surely tell you I'm only one or two major versions behind the "latest and greatest" but the hardware itself is a different story. On this device modern GitHub consistently crashes when displaying more than a few hundred lines of code. I've lost the ability to use a perfectly functioning device due to bloatware.


Exactly. The landscape has changed because those old browser users have been forced to update.




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