When can we drop IE11 support?

[LeaVerou]

Once we can drop IE11, we will be able to depend on CSS variables.
This means we can finally get rid of the whole problem "how do all themes work with all languages?". Themes would just define variables, language definitions would just use these variables.

What do you think?

[mAAdhaTTah]

I'm personally OK w/ dropping IE11 support, but I know projects I work on generally still support it as MSFT is still supporting that browser. Additionally, IE11 still works w/ Windows 10, so MSFT may continue to support it for a while.

This is also definitely a breaking change, so we should release as a 2.0. If we drop IE11 support, we could probably go all-in on ES6 as well, if that helps the code at all.

Just some thoughts. Not really sure where I stand, tbh.

[ExE-Boss]

We could maybe support CSS variables and use postcss-custom-properties for rudimentary IE11 support.

[LeaVerou]

That defeats the whole point of using CSS variables, since any combination of theme and language would have to be pre-compiled.

[LeaVerou]

I'm wondering if we could start using CSS variables without completely dropping IE11 support. We could use PostCSS or something to add fallbacks, and IE11 would just use those fallbacks. So people on IE11 would still get highlighting, just not customized highlighting. Would that make sense?

[RunDevelopment]

Microsoft is retiring IE11 in June 2022.

[joshgoebel]

Are you planning to support it until then?

[RunDevelopment]

Given the current progress on v2, I can't blame you for thinking that but no :)

[mAAdhaTTah]

Technically, dropping IE11 support is a breaking change, so we really should support it until then, unfortunately.

[mAAdhaTTah]

Unless I misunderstood the comment/question. To rephrase, v1 should support IE11. v2 was never intended to. So really, we'll support IE11 until whenever v2 gets out. Or at least, that's what I think we should do.

[RunDevelopment]

To rephrase, v1 should support IE11. v2 was never intended to.

Yup, that's pretty much it. We'll support IE11 for the whole of v1.x and then drop it in v2.0.0.

[ljharb]

"users stop using it" is a date that is not tightly correlated to "a company stops supporting it".

[LeaVerou]

Yup, agreed too. Whoever needs IE11 support can just stay on v1.

[RunDevelopment]

IE11 is dropped in v2.

[xjArea]

I don't think it's a problem to delete IE11 in V2, but I recently updated Prism.js and found that V1 can't be used in IE11. Check the error and find that it's a RegExp problem. In V1.25.0, IE11 still OK, but V1.26.0 will report an error, so is it not supported now ? 😭

[LeaVerou]

I don't think it's a problem to delete IE11 in V2, but I recently updated Prism.js and found that V1 can't be used in IE11. Check the error and find that it's a RegExp problem. In V1.25.0, IE11 still OK, but V1.26.0 will report an error, so is it not supported now ? 😭

Can you please file this as a new bug? This is not intentional.

[xjArea]

file this as a new bug : #3558