Forum Not Working on old versions of Safari

Thanks to amazing folks in this community I’m finally in bootstrap mode of my new forum. It’s working fine on Chrome but…
Why cannot I not access my forum on Safari? I saw a lot of questions regarding use on mobile but none about desktop.

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Which version of Safari? Discourse is supported on Safari and I use it under Mac OS daily.

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Version 13.0.3

https://forum.irresistible.org

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The forum loads for me on Safari 13.0.3 (though it’s log-in required so I can’t see much else). Are you seeing any errors? a blank page?

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Hmm, weird. I can’t open the forum in Safari or Firefox (on macOS), but it does open correctly in Chrome. Either way, this looks like an issue with that site’s configuration, not Discourse per se.

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Was it a local site config issue, and if so what was the fix? A user of El Capitan is having this same issue now (can’t open discourse.iapct.org with Firefox or Safari).

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I’ve just opened your site on macOS Safari 15.6

What exactly does your user experience? Site not loading at all, missing styles, or …?

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Apparently the big Nada. But he reports that Vivaldi is currently working for him.

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Can you confirm which version of Safari they’re running? It’s more important than their version of macOS in determining compatibility.

El Capitan (10.11) is seven years old now and stopped receiving updates four years ago. Discourse requires Safari 12.5, and as far as I’m aware the minimum requirements for Safari 12 is Sierra (10.12).

That said, it should fail reasonably gracefully, can we get more info on what they’re experiencing?

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I am asking him what version of Safari he tried and how it failed.

I tried to use the discourse site today, and was told that my browser is
suddenly unsupported. I don’t remember any general announcement to the
effect that Firefox had to be upgraded to some new level inaccessible to
me, trying to stick to the El Capitan operating system. Now I am unsure
what to do, being prohibited from posting or really seeing the forum
properly, and using the most upgraded Firefox available to me.

The next day

the most up to date version of Firefox available on El Capitan was dropped without
any notice that it was about to happen or that it had happened. With some notice,
I might have prepared for it, and not been shocked when I tried to follow a thread
and found I was not allowed to.

Then yesterday 8/22

Safari doesn’t work either.

and

What I saw was the list of categories and topics, but as a simple list without decoration.
I could not log in or access anything by clicking on it.

I gather that Vivaldi is, like Firefox, a communally maintained browser, so it probably
has its own flaws. But if it works for the discourse site as recently amended. I can use
it by copying the links in the “read more” in the email notification. Not as convenient as
being able to click on the links, but I don’t think I want to move from Firefox to Vivaldi
as my default browser, at least not yet, if ever.

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Martin’s reply: Safari Version 11.1.2 (11605.3.8.1)

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So the user in the unsupported browser is getting our basic HTML view, that is what should be happening, so that’s good.

Looks like even Google dropped support for that old version of Mac OS

So this user can use Chrome/Vivaldi for some time but since every browser vendor abandoned their OS it’s a matter of time before we also do so.

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I guess in summary it’s not really a Discourse issue at all, with major software vendors abandoning that OS release downstream compatibility issues become inevitable.

I’m not sure what the user expects here, but as Falco pointed out above Chrome gives them a temporary solution while they figure out next steps.

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The experience of suddenness without notice was the first rub, the violation of what Jared Spool called ‘the principle of least astonishment’.

As Martin said, his fundamental issue is with Apple for reneging on Steve Jobs’ (unenforceable) promise of eternal life.

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I’m curious how old the hardware running El Capitan is.

Sierra works on iMacs and MacBooks going as far back as 2009.

With that in mind I don’t think it’s fair to call this sudden. Either the user can upgrade to a newer OS release and has chosen not to, or they’re apparently perplexed that their computer from 2007/2008 doesn’t run software some ~15 years later.

Again though, I don’t think this is really fair to raise as a Discourse issue. As the requirements lay out:

Discourse is designed for the next 10 years of the Internet, so the minimum browser requirements are high.
Discourse supports the latest, stable releases of all major browsers and platforms.

Bear in mind that Discourse itself didn’t launch til 2014, by which time the hardware in question could have already been as much as 6/7 years old.

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