Why is Discourse dropping IE11 support?
From the beginning, Discourse has been built for the future of the internet. Discourse relies on current, evolving web standards as it is developed. Microsoft is no longer updating IE11 to support modern web standards, they are only providing security updates and support. Given the lack of updates, Discourse development has become hindered by IE11. When new features are developed, they frequently require IE-specific code to ensure they work as expected, as they make use of technologies which are not (and will never be) supported by IE.
What is the timeline?
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Jan 2020: This announcement goes live.
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Jan 2020: New warning banner added to Discourse users accessing sites via IE alerting them to the upcoming drop of support. Site admins may customize the banner text as they see fit.
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Jan 2020: Support for accessing the Discourse admin panel via IE11 will be dropped. Admins will receive an error message.
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Mar 2020: All Discourse release notes will include a reminder about the upcoming drop in IE11 support, and link to this announcement,
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Jun 1, 2020: Support for IE11 dropped. Users accessing Discourse sites from IE will see a readonly, basic HTML view, along with an “upgrade browser” banner.
How do I prepare?
Your users should be encouraged to upgrade to a modern, standards compliant browser, prior to June 1. This includes the latest versions of Mozilla Firefox, Microsoft Edge and Google Chrome among others.
What is the readonly, basic HTML view?
The readonly, basic HTML view is a simplified view of Discourse that does not require modern web standards. Users accessing this view will not be able to sign up or log in - only public content is accessible. Users will be able to browse the topic list, view topics/replies, and see the post like count. All other features, including searching, liking, bookmarking, viewing user profiles, infinite scroll, etc. are not supported.