A message should be displayed for unsupported browsers

[shane-tomlinson]

If we check for window.localStorage and window.postMessage, we should be able to find a large portion of browsers that are not supported.

[jbonacci]

Shane - did you determine this with a specific browser on a specific platform?
Dan and I have been working on the test matrix for supported browsers, but now I am wondering if we should compile a list of unsupported browsers for testing situations just like this one...

[shane-tomlinson]

@jbonacci: our minimum technical requirements are window.localStorage and window.postMessage. Even with these requirements met, there are performance issues to worry about - for instance iOS takes ~20 seconds per key generated, IE8 about the same. The other hitch that seems to be getting us right now is whether we can communicate between windows, this is especially problematic on mobile browsers.

[jbonacci]

So, then, maybe we do need to document this as well as show some dialog.
Old browsers are kinda assumed (I am not sure what % of people still use old IE for example).
Chrome, Opera, Safari, and now FF are almost always automatically updated.
Not sure what else is out there that is "unsupported" or an old version of a supported product.
I need to read up on what MS says about "compatibility view"...
I am not even sure what % of IE users ever do this...

[shane-tomlinson]

a8230cc displays an alert and will not open the dialog. We could use a cleaner solution, perhaps a nice page?

[lloyd]

labeled 'needs UX input'

[clarkbw]

OK, instead of a dialog I want to use the center space for our error messages.
http://cl.ly/2h453W2r0E2d460M2D21

The important thing here is to decide what we want our users to be able to do. We can say "IE doesn't work" but we should explain why and what they could do to actually sign in, like use Firefox.

It would be great to have a breakdown of the various browser support situations on a wiki page that we can link to. I think as a minimal approach, starting from the basics of what I have, I want to say "This isn't supported but modern browsers like Firefox are. Check out our full support page here for other options."

Something more like this: http://cl.ly/3Y311l0g421k0A0A2T1G however possibly less Firefox branding.

[jbonacci]

I like this idea. I have been (gently) pushing for a public doc site, so maybe a support site would be a nice companion to that.
Plus I REALLY REALLY like the message in your sample.... ;-)

[shane-tomlinson]

@clarkbw, we need a solution that addresses other browsers that are incompatible as well, right now we check for Internet Explorer <= 8 and display an IE specific message. We also check for browsers that do not support localStorage, postMessage, and if the browser has problems with JSON.decode(null) (Android < 3.0) and display a generic message.

This brings up a question of whether we should have an API method that an RP can call to see if the user's browser supports BrowserID. If the browser does not support BrowserID, they could avoid displaying the button?

[shane-tomlinson]

@clarkbw - your response from our email -

"Agreed, I'm wondering if we want to do a bit of both. For mobile browsers we have a bit of different layout and I think we'll want to continue that in this kind of error page. I'd suggest we file a separate bug for the query API. "

I'll tackle this as you suggest with http://cl.ly/3Y311l0g421k0A0A2T1G. We'll get an initial rev and then iterate.

[shane-tomlinson]

Baaahh! I had this entirely within the dialog and then realized that the approach will not work for browsers that do not have window.postMessage. The reason is we wait until the channel is set up to redirect to the normal dialog site. Since window.postMessage does not exist, the redirect never happens.

Going to change tack, going to do the checking from include.js. If the check fails, I am going to redirect to an alternate page to display in the dialog.

[jbonacci]

Not the easiest thing to test since I usually keep my browser updates fresh, even on VMs.
Luckily I have IE8 running on Windows XP!

Error message verified: We're sorry, but currently your browser isn't supported.
Large logo: check!
Noting the following text and links:
BrowserID works with Firefox and other modern browsers.

The "learn more" link correctly opens diresworb.org
The "Firefox" link goes to http://getfirefox.com which maps to
http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/new/?from=getfirefox

The "modern browsers" link goes to http://whatbrowser.org/.
Which correctly shows me using the following:
You are using:
Internet Explorer 8
released March 2009

Here is my issue with going to this site:
The "Try a New Browser" section does not show FireFox!
It only shows icons/links for Opera, Google Chrome, and IE.

Do we really want to use this link if Firefox is not prominently displayed on the page?
I guess this could be a separate issue for discussion.