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Mobile Graded Browser Support

Yahoo has one of the best overall strategies regarding desktop browser web development with their graded browser support chart. They break down browsers into various levels: A-grade browsers get the full experience (JavaScript, CSS, etc.), C-grade browsers get no JavaScript or CSS, and everything else gets the idealized A-grade level of functionality (assuming that it’s simply a browser that’s not known about).

Compared to mobile web development, the potential browser choices in desktop web development seems downright simple. In mobile development there are more engines, on more platforms, and with more active versions of the browsers.

When we look at the major browsers that are available, we need to figure out what platforms they’re running on and what versions of those browsers work well-enough to support.

jQuery core is working to support all A and B grade browsers.

Mobile Graded Browser Support Platform Version Native Opera Mobile Opera Mini Fennec Ozone Netfront Phonegap 8.5 8.65 9.5 10.0 4.0 5.0 1.0 1.1 0.9 4.0 0.9

iOS

v2.2.1

B

B

v3.1.3 , v3.2

A

C

A

v4.0

A

C

A

Symbian S60

v3.1, v3.2

B

C

C

A

C

C

C

C

v5.0

A

C

C

A

C

C

A

Symbian UIQ

v3.0, v3.1

C

C

v3.2

C

C

Symbian Platform

3.0

A

Blackbery OS

v4.5

F

C

C

v4.6 , v4.7

B

C

C

A

v5.0

B

C

C

A

v6.0

A

C

C

Android

v1.5

A

A

v1.6

A

A

v2.1

A

A

v2.2

A

A

C

A

A

Windows Mobile

v6.1

F

C

C

B

B

C

C

C

v6.5.1

B

C

C

B

A

C

C

v7.0

B

A

C

C

webOS

1.4.1

A

A

bada

1.0

A

Maemo

5.0

C

B

C

B

MeeGo

1.1

A

A

A

What do the grades mean? The grades are a combination of the browser quality combined with the browser’s relevance in the larger mobile market. Generally speaking we break down the grades in this manner:

Key:

• A High Quality. A high quality browser with notable market share. A must-target for a mobile web developer.
• B Medium Quality. Either a lower quality browser with high market share or a high quality browser with low market share. Depending upon your capabilities you should work to support these browsers, as well.
• C Low Quality. Typically an extremely low quality browser with high market share. Generally not capable of running modern JavaScript or DOM code.
• F Failing. A barely-functioning browser. Even though it has some market share you should avoid developing for it completely.
• Upcoming browser. This browser is not yet released but is in alpha/beta testing.

More information about the particular platforms, browsers, and versions is forthcoming. In the meantime, you can read through a recent presentation about the challenges crossed when testing mobile JavaScript, by John Resig:

© 2010 The jQuery Project

Sponsored by Media Temple , Mobile Project Sponsors and Others .

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