I am finding users with very old unsupported Windows versions. What versions of Windows does Discourse support (I cant find this info anywhere…)
Anything that can run:
So there’s no real list. That means I have to search what browser versions all the versions of Windows back to 7 support. I see. It would be handy if there was such a list.
There are browsers that work on Windows 7 and are supported by Discourse.
Which are not listed in the supported browsers list given here on Meta Discourse.
i’m fairly certain I remember either Firefox or the ESR release still having Windows 7 support. You should have no problem running Discourse on a Firefox ESR release.
What is important to highlight is that Discourse doesn’t support any Windows version that Microsoft themselves don’t support.
With that out of the way, I have tested myself that users from Windows XP upwards can get it working with minimal effort by installing a modern browser fork:
Given that Windows XP is turning 25 years old, and much older than Discourse itself, it is impressive that this is even possible.
Looks like Firefox 115 ESR is a good bet.
Nope. We’re getting angry messages from people running Firefox 115 ESR on Windows 7 stating “I cannot access the site”.
According to Wikipedia, extended, extended support for Windows 7 ended on October 8, 2024
So that’s an insecure option to be running these days?
Did they say what the problem was? TLS negotiation failure?
Most people running Windows 7 in 2026 are not able to get any further than “doesn’t work”, unfortunately.
It’s possibly not even Discourse at this point. Their system probably doesn’t support modern TLS encryption schemes, which are the default ones enabled nowadays.
Sending them to https://clienttest.ssllabs.com:8443/ssltest/viewMyClient.html and having them send you the results might help diagnose.
The post by Sam quoted above states that everything below FF v128 is unsupported. So we can go through a long back-and-forth with the user but the odds we’re going to be able to solve their issue are very small, whilst initiating that back-and-forth will give them the impression that things can actually be solved.
So I’d rather tell them “sorry, just update”, since that is the right thing and it won’t give them false hope.
Oh indeed, both latest Chrome and Firefox on Windows 7 don’t work anymore.
That said, I just tested both GitHub - Eclipse-Community/r3dfox: r3dfox is a modern Firefox based web browser for Windows Vista & 7. SourceForge link for downloading with older browsers. https://sourceforge.net/projects/r3dfox/ · GitHub and GitHub - win32ss/supermium: Chromium fork for Windows XP/2003 and up · GitHub and they work.
So there is an alternative for users who can install a program.
Supermium was already mentioned as an alternative in the announcement. Maybe it would help to add the other ones too? At least, that’s the place where I would probably look for them first in case this topic comes up again.
I hope this isn’t an unwelcome detour on this thread. I recently moved a big community from VBulletin to Discourse and discovered some Windows 7 users that couldn’t access the site. I found the posts here and I mentioned Thorium to the user who was having trouble. He has installed it, it works, and he’s using our Discourse now.
My question is: I don’t know what people see when their browser isn’t supported (assuming the TLS is negotiated correctly, but the browser lacks the required capabilities) I don’t know how to control the text on that screen. On my Discourse, can I put links to things like Thorium on the page they see when their browser isn’t supported? Based on what they said, it sounds like this user was seeing something but it was a landing page or error page telling him that his browser wasn’t supported.
Is the text that users see in this situation something I can control as an admin? Discourse might not want to put a link to some random project like Thorium in the default install. But I’m perfectly willing to do it on my own site. I just don’t know where it is.
Related, is there a way I can, with a modern computer and modern browsers, tweak my setup somehow so I can see what my users are seeing in these situations? I don’t have any Windows 7 or ancient devices available to me. I know what it looks like if TLS fails to negotiate, and that’s not a thing I can fix, but what if TLS does succeed but the browser is too old? How do I see that?
this topic and post might help you - it shows what they see in the video
Users see a static HTML view of the forum, so they can read all public posts, but cannot log in to like or reply. (They can still reply via email if that’s configured and they received a notification they can reply to.)
I think you can edit the banner, which you see at the top of the Meta forum in the video Lilly linked, like any text in Discourse (guide). Its key should be js.browser_update.
Unfortunately, your browser is unsupported. Please switch to a supported browser to view rich content, log in and reply.
So adding the link to either the topic on Meta with the suggestions or one of the alternative browsers directly should be possible.
An easy way to see what users see when their browser is outdated is to disable javascript. But I think then you won’t see the banner because the reason isn’t the browser being outdated but javascript being disabled. For that, installing an older browser or using a tool like BrowserStack might be better.