Google will not support old browsers from August 1, 2011.
What are the older browsers according to Google???
IE7, Safari 3, Firefox 3.5 and their predecessors to view Gmail, Google Calendar, Talk, Docs and Sites will then lose some functions.Eventually, it warned, these web services will stop working for those sticking with older browsers.Why???
- The move is part of a trend to stop the use of ageing browsers which can be insecure and not sophisticated enough to handle the latest web technologies.
- Code malfunction Statistics on browser versions gathered by StatCounter suggest about 17% need to change in the light of Google's decision.
- Google made its announcement in a blogpost saying its engineers were keen to make use of the latest capabilities in browsers, and that required support for HTML5 technology.
- As a result, from 1 August, Google will only support what it calls "modern browsers". By this it means the latest versions and major prior releases of Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer and Safari.
- As new versions of these are released, Google will get its web services working with that and then drop support for the third-oldest version.
- Support in this sense means that Google will only do compatibility testing with more up-to-date browsers. It will not carry out tests with older programmes and can make no guarantees that web services will work with them.
