Board Game Arena

Per http://en.doc.boardgamearena.com/Browser_support, apparently our games are supposed to support IE 9 ( I had to modify the page to at least mention IE 11 instead of IE 9). But I do understand it's desirable to support current (near current) versions of all major browsers (Chrome/Safari, Firefox, Edge, and IE 11).

Sites like https://netmarketshare.com/ and http://gs.statcounter.com/ show general browser usage for the Internet at large, but I'm wondering about the usage profile for BGA website specifically. It would be interesting if the admins could provide a browser usage profile specifically for BGA. Is it similar to these general numbers?

If I know that my game doesn't support a particular browser, what is the best way to indicate this? Is there a way to show a message before the game begins? Is there a preferred method to block these users from accessing the game?

I looked at stats and they are very similar, but it was not split by version of IE which kind of useless.
I was trying not to support IE but some people still use it, so IE11 probably as much as you should go.

So far the only things that I hit was:
JS: missing "includes" , "startsWith" on strings
CSS: missing background-position-x[-y]
(later is very annoying because I have to rewrite lots of css)

I am considering specifically the CSS clip-path property (for example, see https://bennettfeely.com/clippy/) which gives nice control of element shape. It is not supported by Microsoft browers. If I decide to go with this approach anyway, I was asking to learn the best way to warn/block IE users before starting the game.

We currently have no generic way in place to stop a browser from entering a game, and this is not really a goal
The idea would be more that if some unsupported functions are used, for other browsers the game would be a little degraded but still usable. Don't know if that's possible for what you want to do.

Here are some browser usage stats from the beginning of last year (sorry nothing more recent, we had to disable the markers for some SSL compatibility issue last year).

Speaking of browser usage: what games are most popular on mobile? I find with some games the tiny screens don't lend themselves to play even though the resolution is large enough.

brisdaz wrote:Speaking of browser usage: what games are most popular on mobile? I find with some games the tiny screens don't lend themselves to play even though the resolution is large enough.

"Some" games in not useful information, please open bug for the games you think are not playable

Victoria_La wrote:

brisdaz wrote:Speaking of browser usage: what games are most popular on mobile? I find with some games the tiny screens don't lend themselves to play even though the resolution is large enough.

"Some" games in not useful information, please open bug for the games you think are not playable

Mobile isn't officially supported so I can't open bug reports.

a) It is supported. I play on my phone all the time.
b) You can open any bug you want. You just open a bug per game because they are all different.

brisdaz wrote:
Mobile isn't officially supported so I can't open bug reports.

Is there any recent guidance on this? Should I only care about modern browsers for the initial version of my game?

Yes, only care about modern browsers.

See https://en.doc.boardgamearena.com/Compatibility regarding what browsers the BGA main site targets. I absolutely DO NOT recommend that anyone follow BGA's advise because their target string last 2 versions, not dead, > 0.2% still includes Internet Explorer ("not dead" appears to be misplaced). There is no reason whatsoever to support IE anymore and the BGA main site doesn't work in IE anyway, despite this browser target.

Instead, a more reasonable target string is: > 0.2%, not dead, not android > 0

Since Chrome, Edge, and Firefox are all "evergreen" (continual, automatic updates), old versions disappear quickly and don't need special support. The problem is old versions of Safari (tied into the Apple operating systems and at some point users cannot update anymore without purchasing a new Apple device).