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Browser Compatibility

Piotrek Koszuliński edited this page Apr 20, 2018 · 5 revisions


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This wiki served in the early days of CKEditor 5 development and can be severely outdated.

Refer to the official CKEditor 5 documentation for up-to-date information.






(tl;dr) Targeting major browsers on their latest version and major mobile OSs with their stock browser. Different solutions may be proposed depending on a combination of features on devices.

Desktop Browsers

CKEditor 5 is a strong step forward to the future and this is to be reflected in our position regarding browser compatibility. Considering that cutting-edge technology is to be used in the editor code, only browsers that actively promote the newest web standards will be taken in consideration, at least in the first stage.

Therefore the following is the target browser compatibility for desktop OSs:

  • Chrome - latest version on Windows, Mac and Linux.
  • Safari - latest version on Mac.
  • Firefox - latest version on Windows, Mac and Linux.
  • IE/Edge - Latest version on Windows.

The above browsers are to be compatible in their “standards” rendering mode.

About Internet Explorer

There are doubts regarding how we are going to support IE in the future. Right now we’re targeting IE11, but we’ll review our position to understand if support for IE10 is necessary taken the adoption of IE11 and Edge.

At the design phase of CKEditor 5, we’re not taking in consideration older versions of IE, not even IE in quirks mode or in compatibility view. By the time CKEditor 5 will be released we’ll verify the current general status of the browser market share and wait for feedback from our community. Based on this we’ll decide whether any further compatibility effort will make sense.

Mobile Devices

Mobile devices, or actually their OSs/browsers, are not as mature as desktop solutions when it comes to web editing. Additionally, there is a huge combination of device types, sizes, OSs and browsers that could be taken into consideration. Therefore, as this environment is passing through a fast transformation and evolution, we’re simplifying our targeted support to the following:

  • Latest iOS with its stock browser (Safari)
  • Latest Android with its stock browser (currently, Chrome)
  • Latest Windows on Microsoft Surface with its stock browser (IE)

For iOS and Android, at least two device types will be taken into consideration: tablets and smartphones.

Device Detection

The goal of device detection is to make it possible to provide dedicated solutions for the following:

  • Different UI solutions, based on the available screen size.
  • Different UX solutions for input and control, based on the use of a mouse/keyboard or finger-touch.

Both above aspects, either independently or combined, will drive the UI/UX decisions and solutions in CKEditor 5, making it possible to categorize devices as in the following:

  • Desktop Device
  • Large Mobile (e.g. tablet)
  • Small Mobile (e.g. smartphone)

Test Environments Summary

There are several browser and device combinations that are not taken into account in our official compatibility matrix. The main idea about official compliance though is guiding the CKEditor team on which environments should participate in the everyday coding workflow and in pre-release testing phases.

The following is the current summary of environments to get tested:

  • Desktop:
    • Chrome on Windows or Linux or Mac
    • Firefox on Windows or Linux or Mac
    • Safari on Mac
    • IE/Edge on Windows (any)
  • Mobile:
    • Chrome on Android (any)
    • Safari on iOS (latest)

For all browsers, we’ll be using their very last non-beta versions.

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