Browser support lists
The following lists represent the supported browsers identified after reviewing the stats for Jan–Feb 2013 across www.qld.gov.au and integrated applications (~875,000 unique visitors during sample).
The browser support plan provides more information on how these lists are maintained and how they should be used.
Full support
Browsers that are statistically prevalent
| Browser | Usage | Notes / Justification |
|
Internet Explorer 9+
|
23% (up from 2%)
|
- Current statistics reflect IE9 and IE10 are on the increase
- IE9 and 10 are increasingly capable and it is not useful at this point to separate them unless you are relying on support for cutting edge HTML5 features
- Testing in either browser is sufficient (testing in IE8 is not a good indication of how a page will render in IE9+).
|
|
Internet Explorer 8
|
25% (down from 35%)
|
- Highest prevalence
- Usage is in slow decline as users/organisations upgrade from Windows XP
- This browser lacks support for HTML5 and CSS3 features
- Test rendering performance of pages/applications with large stylesheets and/or scripts.
|
|
Chrome
|
12%
|
- Moderate prevalence
- This browser has high standards compliance and should be easy to support
- Giving full support to Chrome should ensure other browsers using the WebKit rendering engine will also have good presentation layer support e.g. Safari.
- Chrome release rapidly
- versions will not be specified
- customers upgrade quickly
- smaller differences between the releases
- testing in one of latest three versions should provide a fairly accurate and reliable view of rendering.
|
|
Firefox
|
10%
|
- Moderate prevalence
- This browser has high standards compliance and should be easy to support
- Firefox now release rapidly (every 6 weeks)
- versions will no longer specified
- customers upgrade quickly
- smaller differences between the releases
- testing in one of latest three versions should provide a fairly accurate and reliable view of rendering.
|
|
Safari (iOS)
|
11%
|
- Safari on iPad and iPhone average about slightly above 5% each
- This browser has high standards compliance and should be easy to support
- Testing on iOS will provide some coverage for mobile and tablet devices.
|
Notes:
- Testing desktop browsers under Windows is sufficient, but all platforms/OS supported by these browsers must be supported if incompatibilities become known or are reported.
- Mobile access is becoming important with iOS passing 10% and Android growing (currently at 3%). Mobile browsers are capable but it is worth testing on different devices for usability more than compatibility.
- Emulation:
- Internet Explorer 8+ includes developer tools that can emulate previous versions (down to IE7).
- iOS devices can be emulated using Safari (at the appropriate resolutions), or using Chrome developer tools (which also emulate touch events).
- This may be sufficient for testing if actual browsers/devices cannot be accessed.
Reduced support
Browsers with a statistically significant number of users
| Browser | Usage | Notes/justification |
| Internet Explorer 7 |
3% (down from 17%) |
- This browser has serious bugs in its handling of presentation and behaviour layers.
- The 'Compatibility view' in later versions of IE causes them to emulate IE7.
|
|
Internet Explorer 6
|
6% (down from 7%)
|
- This browser has serious bugs in its handling of presentation and behaviour layers.
|
Unspecified support
All other browsers fall into this category. Some examples of browsers in this category are:
- Safari 4
- Opera
- Android (3%)
