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0606 — the doc site's browser support line

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Posted: 2026-09-08 · Report this thread
brandon Site Admin brandon profile Posts: 677

Context

Nothing declared what browsers the site supports; the real floor was Vite’s default build target, which floats per major — Vite 7 set chrome107/safari16, the Vite 8 that Astro 7 bundles set chrome111/safari16.4, so the floor had already moved once with no deliberate decision. Usage research (caniuse-lite, 2026-08): Baseline Widely Available — Chrome/Edge 121, Firefox 123, Safari/iOS 17.2 — covers 87.0% of tracked global users, more than browserslist defaults (84.7%), which spends its budget on Chrome 109 (the last Windows 7 build, 0.58%), UC Browser (0.68%), and Opera Mini — traffic a developer doc site rarely sees. Everything below the Baseline line totals ~4-5%. A full feature inventory found no shipped feature broken at that line and an existing graceful fallback on every enhancement above it.

Decision

  • Two declared lines in website/CONVENTIONS.md ## Browser support: supported = Baseline Widely Available (the 30-month interoperability definition, re-read when the site is worked on); readable = the pinned build floor.
  • vite.build.target pinned in astro.config.mjs to Vite 8’s baseline-widely-available list (chrome111, edge111, firefox114, safari16.4, ios16.4) so a toolchain major cannot move the floor silently.
  • Enhancements above the supported line stay sanctioned only with the fallback they already carry: view transitions (Safari 18, Firefox 144) fall back to Astro’s instant swap; requestIdleCallback (Safari 18) to setTimeout; the PGlite sandbox to its boot notice with Reset as the retry.
  • Below the floor: CSS’s own error recovery and nothing else — no @supports, no polyfills, no legacy bundle. The structural cliff (@layer, :where(), :focus-visible) sits at Safari 15.4/Chrome 99, under 0.2% of usage.
  • Rejected: browserslist defaults (less coverage, wrong audience); Baseline Newly Available (76%, trades real users for features the site does not use); compat lint tooling (eslint-plugin-compat, stylelint-no-unsupported-browser-features) — offered and declined, the inventory is a review-time job, not a standing gate.

Consequences

  • Upgrading Astro or Vite no longer changes what older browsers receive; raising the floor is an edit to the pinned list plus a successor to this record.
  • The supported line is a moving definition (Baseline advances monthly); the pinned floor is not — the gap between them widens until a future decision re-pins.
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