Tweak Browse Happy so it doesn't jump the gun with out-of-date browser messages

[avcascade]

Browse Happy is a useful tool for encouraging WordPress users to keep their browsers current.

However, sometimes Browse Happy jumps the gun.

For instance, on GNU/Linux distributions like Ubuntu, users can choose to install Chromium directly from the repository (as opposed to downloading Chrome from Google's site).

Chromium, when installed this way, is kept up to date by the operating system's package management tool, not manually. Users receive notifications from their operating system prompting them to upgrade when new versions of the browser are available.

It makes no sense to show a Chromium user a "your browser is out of date" message when their browser is, in fact, up to date - as provided by their distribution.

Unfortunately, that is what it happening now.

Similarly, Microsoft has not yet released Internet Explorer 10 for Windows 7, so it is not appropriate to tell users of IE9 that their browser is out of date. IE10 is available for Windows 7, but only as a release preview - similar to a WordPress release candidate. We wouldn't prompt users to upgrade their production WordPress installations to a release candidate, so why is Browse Happy telling Windows 7 IE users to upgrade to IE10 when the final version of IE10 has yet to be released?

Browse Happy should be tweaked so it does not jump the gun with out-of-date browser messages before browsers are really out of date. Users should only get a prompt to upgrade if there is in fact a newer version of their web browser available to them that is out of beta and suitable for production use.

[SergeyBiryukov]

Related: #18231, #18281

[nacin]

Similarly, Microsoft has not yet released Internet Explorer 10 for Windows 7, so it is not appropriate to tell users of IE9 that their browser is out of date. IE10 is available for Windows 7, but only as a release preview - similar to a WordPress release candidate. We wouldn't prompt users to upgrade their production WordPress installations to a release candidate, so why is Browse Happy telling Windows 7 IE users to upgrade to IE10 when the final version of IE10 has yet to be released?

Yeah, as of a week ago it stopped recommending that IE9 users upgrade for this reason. (I missed that IE10 for Windows 7 was only a release preview.)

Users receive notifications from their operating system prompting them to upgrade when new versions of the browser are available.

What's the latest version of Chromium available for your system? The latest version of Chromium is 25. The latest version of Chrome is only 23. And Browse Happy is currently checking that they are > 18 (though it was briefly checking 23 last week).

It makes no sense to show a Chromium user a "your browser is out of date" message when their browser is, in fact, up to date - as provided by their distribution.

Why? It's out of date. If Debian ships PHP 5.2, are you up to date as provided by your distribution? Or are you just out of date?

[avcascade]

Good to know about IE9 and Windows 7.

A Ubuntu/Kubuntu/Xubuntu/etc. user who installs Chromium from the repository will (currently) be running Version 22.0.1229.94 for Ubuntu 12.10. The Ubuntu developers make an effort to ensure that a fairly recent version of Chromium is available to Ubuntu users. Chromium receives incremental upgrades in between release cycles and major upgrades in April and October of each year.

It makes no sense to show a Chromium user a "your browser is out of date" message when their browser is, in fact, up to date - as provided by their distribution.

Why? It's out of date. If Debian ships PHP 5.2, are you up to date as provided by your distribution? Or are you just out of date?

It's true that distributions often ship software that is not the most current version. Particularly Debian, which prizes stability. The point I'm trying to make, though, is that a notice which tells a user that the browser provided by their distribution is out of date is true but useless (TBU) information. Many users depend on the developers of their distribution for browser updates. Not all GNU/Linux users are highly skilled system administrators capable of compiling code from source or adding non-default repositories to their list of software sources. There's no point in telling users of popular distributions like Ubuntu that their browser is not the most recent version; non-skilled users can't or won't update until a new version is pushed out to them, and highly skilled users probably don't need reminders in the first place, since they know what their systems are running.

If Browse Happy is checking for > 18, Ubuntu users running 12.10 should not see a warning.

[chriscct7]

I've debated whether its actually an issue to tell users that their 8 year old distro's bundled browser is out of date. I feel like if the distro's version is out of date, we should still let the users know. If Chrome released a security release, and 8 months go by and a distro doesn't update, then the user, regardless of the fact that they run the latest version bundled with their distro, is still at the end of the day running an out of date (and insecure) browser.

For this reason, regardless of the distro or operating system the user is on, we should let Browse Happy do it's job and inform the user that the browser is out of date.

Closing as wontfix