> I've spent enough time doing my job and enough time on CanIUse to know that the era of worrying about browser compatibility is behind us.
Its not. Its just that many developers have stopped caring about it. Google is releasing new APIs at a ridiculous pace, many of which are not needed for a huge chunk of websites. if developers want, they can avoid using newer APIs, or use them but add fallbacks for older browsers.
> for anything other than Opera.
sure, if you look at the current version of major browsers, support is pretty good for everything. but some users are locked to an old version, either out of personal preference, or work mandates. so its helpful if web developers dont use assume everyone is one the latest browser version. they dont need to support every version of every browser, but I think its reasonable to expect a two year old browser to work with most current websites, and more and more that is not the case.
Google is releasing new APIs at a ridiculous pace, many of which are not needed for a huge chunk of websites.
Worse is that Google demonstrably has no qualms about leaving beta-quality implementations of new APIs in place for months or even years or about forcibly retiring APIs it decides shouldn't be there any more. It has done both of those things many times including with widely used functionality. Don't like it? Sorry guys but you should have been on the pre-alpha-might-release-it-one-day channel so you had a few weeks of notice to rewrite your entire style sheet.
Following one dominant browser at the expense of open standards is exactly how we got years of stagnation with IE6. Those of us who remember that period have no desire to see another like it. But those who do not learn from history...
Its not. Its just that many developers have stopped caring about it. Google is releasing new APIs at a ridiculous pace, many of which are not needed for a huge chunk of websites. if developers want, they can avoid using newer APIs, or use them but add fallbacks for older browsers.
> for anything other than Opera.
sure, if you look at the current version of major browsers, support is pretty good for everything. but some users are locked to an old version, either out of personal preference, or work mandates. so its helpful if web developers dont use assume everyone is one the latest browser version. they dont need to support every version of every browser, but I think its reasonable to expect a two year old browser to work with most current websites, and more and more that is not the case.