This document aims to list all tested browsers and operating systems and to document the limitations of each platform. Please report your browser and how well it works via GitLab. Keep in mind that current systems shouldn't have any problems, I'm mostly interested in older browsers and OS'es.
| Version | Operating System | Load | Display | Features | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Page | over HTTPS | Styles | Fonts | Scripts | Navbar | Alerts | Emojis | Code | Dark Mode | Search | ||
| Internet Explorer | ||||||||||||
| 6.0 | Windows XP (SP3) | yes | no | yes | no | yes | no | yes* | no | broken | no | no |
| 8.0 | Windows 7 | yes | no* | yes | no | yes | no | yes* | no | broken | no | no |
| Lynx | ||||||||||||
| 2.9.0dev.6 | Ubuntu GNU/Linux | yes | yes | n/a | n/a | n/a | n/a | n/a | yes* | n/a | n/a | no |
| Mozilla Firefox | ||||||||||||
| 2.0 | Windows XP (SP3) | yes | no | yes | no | yes | broken | yes | no | broken | no | no |
| 52.9.0 | Windows XP (SP3) | yes | yes | yes | yes | yes | yes | yes | yes | yes | yes | yes |
| MyPal | ||||||||||||
| 29.3 | Windows XP (SP3) | yes | yes | yes | yes | yes | yes | yes | yes | yes | yes | yes |
| Netscape Navigator | ||||||||||||
| 4.8 | Windows XP (SP3) | yes | no | no | no | yes | no | no | no | no | no | no |
| 6.2 | Windows XP (SP3) | yes | no | yes | no | yes | broken | yes | no | broken | no | no |
| Safari | ||||||||||||
| iOS 6.1.6 | iOS 6.1.6 iPod Touch 4G | yes* | no | yes | yes | yes | no | yes | yes* | yes | no | n/t |
| iOS 9.3.5 | iOS 9.3.5 iPad 2 | yes | yes* | yes | yes | yes | yes | yes | yes* | yes | no | no |
Benchmark Descriptions
Possible Ratings
The following ratings are possible:
- yes means the benchmark has been passed without any notable issues.
- yes* means the benchmark has been passed but there are some minor issues.
- broken means the benchmark has not been passed fully. It might work, it might not.
- no means the benchmark has not been passed at all.
- n/a means that this benchmark is not applicable for this browser / operating system. Usually to be described in remarks.
- n/v means that this benchmark could not be tested. Usually to be described in remarks.
Load
Under "Load", the report describes if a certain resource loads and renders, regardless of its quality.
- Page: Describes if the page loads at all. If this test fails, further tests are irrelevant.
- over HTTPS: Describes if the page can be loaded over HTTPS. Requires that the browser supports current encryption technologies and trusts current certificate authorities.
- Styles: Describes if CSS stylesheets load. If a document appears unstyled (loading with default formatting), the test is considered failed.
-
Fonts:
Describes if the browser was able to load the CSS-provided
fonts. For this test to succeed, multiple TTF fonts have to
be loaded from the server and displayed correctly. The fonts
provided are called
Fira Sans,Fira MonoandFira Code(in different variants). -
Scripts:
Describes if the browser was able to load the provided JavaScript
files. Does not evaluate if features actually work.
Can be validated by observing the "Theme" buttons in the Navigation Bar.
Browsers that support
localStorageshould have this button displayed.
Display
"Display" evaluates key features of the website being displayed correctly. These include:
- Navbar: The navigation bar should be displayed on top of the screen. It remains on top of the page, covers the full width, has a fixed height and displays the dropdown menu correctly (located under "Posts"). The "Search" link should be aligned on the right side of the screen. Report as "broken" if the navigation bar is displayed but slimmer than it should be, or link alignments are wrong.
- Alerts: Alert Boxes have a defined padding that should be honored. It is surrounded with a border and the title has a fixed background color. Depending on the type of alert, a certain background color for its content is expected. "Broken" means that styling is applied but certain aspects are not as expected, "No" means no highlighting is provided at all.
- Emojis: Most older systems won't support emojis and render them either as question marks ("?") or missing character boxes.
- Code: The website may provide code in a green box which includes syntax highlighting. "Broken" means that basic syntax highlighting doesn't work or that the box, where it should be contained in, is not aligned correctly. "No" means no formatting or syntax highlighting has taken place and no distinction between regular text and code (other than the font) is visible.
Features
"Features" describes additional, optional website features that are expected to not work on older systems but are not required for the websites operation.
- Search: Search requires JavaScript and a JavaScript library loading a JSON document from the server which contains an index of all blog posts and their meta data. If the library cannot be loaded correctly, the code is expected to abort gracefully, hide the search input and display a warning with links to the full post list or category list. This warning means, the test has failed, resulting in "No". "Broken" means that the search technically loads but might not work as expected or some display issues might be visible.
-
Dark Mode:
This website features a "Dark Mode", styling the page in dark colors
for easier reading at night. For this to work,
the current setting has to be stored in the browsers local storage.
If the browser doesn't support
localStorage, this feature is disabled and removed from the navigation bar, resulting in "No".
Remarks
This section lists some remarks on the report summary provided above.
Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0
Regarding Alerts: Alerts are colored correctly but spacing is not present.
Regarding Code: Code is displayed but Syntax Highlighting is not working correctly.
Windows Internet Explorer 8.0
IE8 shares the same issues as IE6, however Emojis seem to work slightly better.
Due to the OS, IE8 on Windows 7 might be able to actually load the site over HTTPS, however I could not get it to load on a fresh install of Windows 7 with no service packs or updates installed, so I count it as a Fail.
Lynx
Lynx is a command-line browser. As such, various features are not working and they are expected to not work.
- JavaScript is not available
- CSS is not available, therefore styling is not working
Because CSS is not available, a few blocks that should be hidden are displayed anyway. For example, the desktop and mobile navbars are displayed. The search template is displayed. Also "Dark Mode" is not applicable.
Support for Emojis is dependant on the terminal emulator being used.
Mozilla Firefox 52.9
Firefox 52.9.0 was the last ESR release of Firefox supporting
Windows XP.
Netscape Navigator 4.8
No stylings are applied except for the "sans-serif" font.
Emojis are displayed at question marks ("?"). The footer navigation renders the separator as "–" instead of "–".
Netscape Navigator 6.2
The page offset to compensate for the navigation bar is not accounted for. As such the title of the page is slightly covered by the navbar.
Safari on iPod Touch 4
While loading, page build takes a very long time, probably due to fonts. The Navbar is not shown therefore also the Dark Mode switch button is missing. A post might be reader through Safari's Reader feature.
Emojis are generally supported, however you might see missing character boxes because iOS 6 doesn't support all current Unicode characters.
Due to long load times, certain features could not be tested. The device does not seem to have enough resources to load the full page, but Safari seems to support a lot of the features the website provides.
Safari on iPad 2
The page loads fine. All styling seems to work just fine.
The page can be loaded over HTTPS, however you will encounter a certificate error since iOS' certificate store might not contain current certificates.
Emojis are generally supported, however you might see missing character boxes because iOS 9 doesn't support all current Unicode characters.
The browser doesn't seem to support localStorage therefore
the "Dark Mode" button is removed.