The discussion revolves around the duration of Discourse’s support for the old Microsoft Edge after the Chromium version’s release on January 15th, 2020. Justin_Vega initially asked about the support roadmap. Falco suggested that the old Edge might be dropped at the same time as IE11, around June 2020. Justin_Vega mentioned that a roadmap for browser support would be helpful. jomaxro replied that such a roadmap doesn’t exist, as major browsers update frequently, making it outdated quickly.
jomaxro clarified that when a browser is deprecated, it will be announced, and Justin_Vega emphasized the importance of a roadmap for end-of-support. jomaxro stated that no formal decisions have been made on dropping support for browsers other than IE11, which will be dropped in June 2020.
seanblue asked for actual browser usage numbers, and jomaxro provided global statistics and noted that removing support doesn’t mean the browser will stop working. Justin_Vega pointed out that Microsoft Edge’s market share is on par with Internet Explorer and is expected to grow with the Chromium version, making it reasonable to drop support for both old Edge and IE at the same time.
One of my acquaintances has a question.
Once Microsoft releases their Chromium version of Edge next year on January 15th, how long will Discourse continue to support the old Microsoft Edge? Is there a roadmap for browser support?
I hope that this question isn’t too vague.
Looks like it will follow the “standard” 6 week release cycle.
Maybe we drop it at the same time as IE11, when it will have gone on for 4 releases?
What exactly do you mean?
That dropping support for old Edge on June 2020 could be a good idea.
Ah, okay. A roadmap for certain browsers would be really handy.
Also, thank you @jomaxro for categorizing the thread. I wasn’t sure where to put it.
That doesn’t really exist.
The answer we typically give is “we support current versions of the major 4 browsers, IE, Chrome, FF, and Safari”. Major browsers don’t typically disappear like IE, so this is a new situation.
I was suggesting one.
I’m not sure what good it would do. With browsers like Chrome and Firefox (and the new Edge) updating every 6 weeks or so, the roadmap would be outdated extremely quickly.
What’s the use case here? The vast majority of users run up to date browsers, and needn’t worry about the exact version of Chrome, for example. When we deprecate support for a browser, like we’re doing for IE, it’ll be announced.
I’m talking about a roadmap for end of support.
Falco gave it to you. IE11 support will be dropped June 2020. As of today, there have been no other formal decisions on dropping support for other browsers.
Thank you for your input. I will tell my acquaintance about this. 
Can you share actual numbers on browser usage? Enterprises for example sometimes keep their browsers a few versions behind. I sometimes use Discourse at work, but I don’t know if that’s common. I’m just kind of curious if “vast majority” means closer to 80% or 98%. 
I’ll have to see if this is something I can easily pull stats on for our hosting.
Global stats, however, are easy to find. Check out StatCounter or CanIUse for example. According to CanIUse, IE has barely 2% usage. Chrome, between desktop and Android has over 50%.
We’re aware. We’ll be notifying customers who have reported IE11 issues to us previously a little closer to when we remove support. Also, note that removing support doesn’t mean we make Discourse stop working on those browsers. It simply means we’re not going to fix every bug we find that is specific to that browser.
It’s also worth mentioning that as of October, Microsoft Edge is on par with Internet Explorer in terms of market share. I would like to assume that the market share for Microsoft Edge will significantly grow once the Chromium version is released in a few months. As a result, dropping support for the old Microsoft Edge and Internet Explorer at the same time would make sense.
Glad it’s still working on MS Edge!
Yeah, and I hope it’ll perform even better once Chromium Microsoft Edge is released. 
2020-01-15T05:00:00Z
