Jim Nielsen’s mother couldn’t open an internet site. Jim labored on confirming the difficulty and documented how he acquired to the underside of it:

“[…] properly it could possibly’t be a browser difficulty. It’s not like my Mother is utilizing Web Explorer! She has comparatively fashionable tech: an iPad (Safari) and a Chromebox (Google Chrome).”

However the extra I thought of it—an internet site that works on some gadgets however not on others—the extra I spotted this needed to be a browser difficulty.

So I appeared on the model of Chrome on my guardian’s pc. Model 76! I knew we had been at ninety-something in 2022, so I figured that was the offender. “I’ll simply replace Chrome,” I believed.

Seems, you possibly can’t.

I completely rejoice the thought of evergreen browsers. It’s one of many absolute most necessary issues that has occurred to the net in recent-ish years. It allows a a lot faster evolution for the net, and all browsers are making the most of it.

However even browsers that I consider as evergreen aren’t at all times. Finally, {hardware} limits the software program. The logic isn’t so simple as “if Chrome, then evergreeen,” for instance.

Safari usually updates by way of system updates, however on this case it was a first-generation iPad Air caught on iOS 12, and no extra updates had been doable for what Apple considers a “classic” gadget. Identical deal with a Chromebook caught at Chrome 76.

A few little optionally available chaining query mark (?) characters borked the entire dang web site. Unlucky. That “serve two bundles, fashionable and legacy” thought remains to be fairly good.

Talking of mothers, I used to be reminded of an older episode of ShopTalk we did with Paul Irish’s mother that has quite a lot of this “common particular person utilizing the web” vibes.

Direct Hyperlink →