Caniuse: Show Browser Release Date / Add age-aligned mode

Created on 20 May 2013 · 19Comments · Source: Fyrd/caniuse

Hi,

Think about extending the UA info adding the release date.

Example, when you see feature X is not working with android 2.3 would be very very handy to quickly find when android 2.3 was public released.

What do you think?

Edit: Please share your love for this open issue, leave here your reactions or comments. We really want to see this feature online soon. Thanks!

Site functionality

Source

NKjoep

👍1

Most helpful comment

Browser release dates are now included in the tooltip when you hover/tap on a version.

Have started working on the UI for a "release date relative mode".

Fyrd on 16 Oct 2016

🎉2 👍1

All 19 comments

I would like it with somewhat different reason. Currently IE8 is in the same row with Firefox 19, and that makes me think that they are contemporary browsers, which is absolutely not true.

saschanaz on 20 May 2013

I agree. For the same reason I opened the issue.

I'd like to partecipate on implementing it.

Tell me if I can do something to help.

Andrea

NKjoep on 21 May 2013

+1 for this!

Danilela on 22 May 2013

ahew on 22 May 2013

krdesign on 22 May 2013

Actually I already have this data internally (though just for desktop browsers), so it would be easy to include in the exported JSONs too. However, I'd like to hear how people would like to see it used on the site. Currently the displayed versions are all based on how much they're being used (based on StatCounter or Google Analytics data), which would seem to be the most useful. What additional value is there in knowing when a version was released?

Fyrd on 22 May 2013

Well, knowing how old is a browser will help you making decisions on which browsers use.
4% of share of a browser released 10 months ago is different from 4% share of a browser born 2 or 3 years ago.

So if would be possibile with a simple tooltip to know the date, I'm sure it would help many people :)

IMHO, I don't feel confident just knowing that 2 or 5 versions back support the viewed item, I'd like to know also from how much time ago the browser started to support it.

NKjoep on 22 May 2013

I kind of see your point, there is indeed a difference between low usage due to newness or oldness. However I'd think it would be pretty easy to tell which is which just from comparing version numbers.

So I think I'll add the date to the tooltips, sure, though it still to me seems more of an "interesting to know" rather than "useful to know" thing.

Fyrd on 23 May 2013

Thank you Fyrd, it's very appreciated

NKjoep on 23 May 2013

If the page show the data with release date, then we can more easily know some additional information.

It would need some complex works, but I would like to see this: image
(Sorry, I failed to draw Firefox 4~21 to be separated because I drew this by hand. This image is based on Audio element data)

Now it shows when the browsers started to support the features "earlier" or "later".
Optionally it even shows which browser is updated more faster :)

Normally the version numbers are enough for us, but I think 'showing them when a user click a button' will good for users who want to know the timeline of the web browsers. When applying them to Calculation of support for currently selected criteria of caniuse, it will show more important data so that I can say like _"IE added web APIs most slowly among others"_ citing the data.

saschanaz on 23 May 2013

@SaschaNaz you said "Normally the version numbers are enough for us"

I'm a web developer too, however with short release ciclyes the browser have It's difficult to remember exactly when they went public :)

The timeline and a sorting criteria would be a pretty cool ninja new feature

NKjoep on 24 May 2013

👍1

redeye86 on 11 Oct 2015

Agreed. Browser such as Firefox and Chrome have very short release cycles while Safari and IE/Edge have much longer cycles. As such, whether a feature was supported, say, two versions ago, has a different meaning for these browsers.

So for example, a feature which was implemented in versions, say, 1 year ago, would be be safer to use than features implemented 2 versions ago.