[Koha-devel] Architectural goals for 3.16

[Paul A]

At 09:59 AM 12/11/2013 +1300, Liz Rea wrote:

>On 11/12/13 05:40, Owen Leonard wrote:
> >> [4] Upgrade the version of Bootstrap we use to 3.x.
> > As I mentioned in IRC today the primary caveat for this goal is that
> > Bootstrap 3 says it "drops support for Internet Explorer 7 and Firefox
> > 3.6." However, it doesn't explicitly say what "dropping support"
> > means. If it means broken functionality, that is a problem for us. If
> > it means graceful degradation, that's more acceptable. I'll be doing
> > some investigation, but I think we need some opinions from others
> > about what level of support we need to offer for IE7 and FF 3.6.
> >
> >  -- Owen
> >
>(this is only my opinion, since you asked.)

Mine too (and we're "small" so maybe near the bottom end of the relevancy 
scale.)

>IE 7 is only available in Windows XP, which is due to be end of life in
>April 2014.

First, I really have no opinion on IE 7 thru 10 -- I do read the stats on 
"market share", and I do have access (for webpage verification purposes) of 
IE8, but that's it...

>Any changes we make for this cycle won't be released until
>after XP is EOL. [snip] XP is an outdated, and dangerous operating system 
>to be
>running.

We're all entitled to our opinions and I respect yours. However XPPro 
SP2,[1] properly set up (with a *user* account, never go on-line with admin 
privileges) is not "dangerous."  EOL, maybe, but I feel that Koha is 
gaining ground in (excuse me if I'm not PC) less developed countries where 
quite frankly older o/s abound for whatever reasons.

Upgrading Koha to deny XP (and I'm not at all sure that's what's being 
proposed) might be cutting off our noses to spite our face.

>It should be noted that it was discovered that bootstrap 3 sites, though
>not officially supported in FF 3.6, still seem to look and work OK.

For the record, I still have (no time to rebuild) half a dozen "kiosks" 
that run FF3.6 under Win98SE (despite a whole bunch of misinformation that 
it's not possible) -- the Koha OPAC is visually perfect (3.8.5 near 
standard OPAC CSS) and very fast. YMMV.

Bottom line: bootstrap 3 is probably the right way to go, and sooner rather 
than later ... but let's not forget that there are probably hundreds of 
thousands, if not potentially millions, of KohaOPAC users who are not as 
"up to date" with their boxes as we might be...

Best regards,
Paul
[1] I have two boxes running XPPro, installed 2001, upgraded SP2 2004 (both 
running IE8 since 2009). They have never, ever failed in 12 years -- 
"bullet-proof" is a term that comes to mind. Note that I have never used 
Vista, Win7 or Win8.