Re:Critical Security Issue Identified in iTerm2
by jlokier on Thursday October 10, 2019 @01:28PM
(#21217108)
> As a web dev, you want to use the latest ES/HTML/CSS specs [...]. How can you target modern users when the browsers on your 6-year old system isn't up-to-date enough to render what most users will see?
You can run latest browsers just fine. I'm talking to you now through Firefox Beta that was released a couple of days ago, on my 6 years old OS. It works just great, latest ES/HTML/CSS specs and all, same as yours. It's more up to date than my phone!
However, if you're serious about testing, portability, accessibility, inclusion, quality, and just looking good to a worldwide audience for your site or app, then you won't rely on testing in a single browser on your own machine.
Especially if your own machine is running the latest bleeding-edge version (as mine is). You may be using something like Selenium, BrowserStack, Sauce Labs etc. with a testing pipeline. Or (as I do), a bunch of browsers in cloud-based VMs.
Even if it's just a manual testing pipeline, there are so many ways a complex web app can render or behave differently on different browsers it's not funny, so well worth testing complex things.
Imagine trying to write something like a mini Google Sheets or Docs without testing on different browsers, while intending for it to be usable to a wide audience. It would break in more ways than you could imagine from testing only on the latest browser on your own machine.
> Given that 97% of devices are on iOS 11 or later [...] I can't imagine why you care about those users.
Not all apps are for consumers.
And not all apps are for distribution on an app store.
And some on a store are for particular audiences. For example government apps, financial services apps targetting people with little cash, and those running on fleets of purchased devices in a business (such as tablets) for a dedicated purpose.
E.g. one of those I've dealt with was effectively a museum full of tablets fixed in place. Nodody's going to purchase new hardware in quantity if the old ones are working fine, just to please a developer who can't figure out how to built for an old target. (When I did that job, it wasn't iOS, but the same principle applies.)
> A valid point as well - this is exactly the context in which COBOL is still used.
I wonder if you're trying to suggest "really really old" with COBOL :-) The same maintenance issues apply to maintaining apps released just a couple of years ago, which supported 5 year old devices at the time they were released, and so aim to maintain the same until they have a major version change.
(Especially business apps rolled out on a fleet of purchased devices, where continuity is a requirement. But also, consumer apps if you care about the customers.)
> macOS developers exist, you know
I do know, where do you think this thread came from :-)
But the vast majority of shipped code is not open source, and when it is, most of it is used only on servers or inside devices.
You can run latest browsers just fine. I'm talking to you now through Firefox Beta that was released a couple of days ago, on my 6 years old OS. It works just great, latest ES/HTML/CSS specs and all, same as yours. It's more up to date than my phone!
However, if you're serious about testing, portability, accessibility, inclusion, quality, and just looking good to a worldwide audience for your site or app, then you won't rely on testing in a single browser on your own machine.
Especially if your own machine is running the latest bleeding-edge version (as mine is). You may be using something like Selenium, BrowserStack, Sauce Labs etc. with a testing pipeline. Or (as I do), a bunch of browsers in cloud-based VMs.
Even if it's just a manual testing pipeline, there are so many ways a complex web app can render or behave differently on different browsers it's not funny, so well worth testing complex things.
Imagine trying to write something like a mini Google Sheets or Docs without testing on different browsers, while intending for it to be usable to a wide audience. It would break in more ways than you could imagine from testing only on the latest browser on your own machine.
> Given that 97% of devices are on iOS 11 or later [...] I can't imagine why you care about those users.
Not all apps are for consumers.
And not all apps are for distribution on an app store.
And some on a store are for particular audiences. For example government apps, financial services apps targetting people with little cash, and those running on fleets of purchased devices in a business (such as tablets) for a dedicated purpose.
E.g. one of those I've dealt with was effectively a museum full of tablets fixed in place. Nodody's going to purchase new hardware in quantity if the old ones are working fine, just to please a developer who can't figure out how to built for an old target. (When I did that job, it wasn't iOS, but the same principle applies.)
> A valid point as well - this is exactly the context in which COBOL is still used.
I wonder if you're trying to suggest "really really old" with COBOL :-) The same maintenance issues apply to maintaining apps released just a couple of years ago, which supported 5 year old devices at the time they were released, and so aim to maintain the same until they have a major version change.
(Especially business apps rolled out on a fleet of purchased devices, where continuity is a requirement. But also, consumer apps if you care about the customers.)
> macOS developers exist, you know
I do know, where do you think this thread came from :-)
But the vast majority of shipped code is not open source, and when it is, most of it is used only on servers or inside devices.