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The highly voted and accepted answer to this question:
Which browsers are officially supported, and what else do I need?
... links to: https://browsers.stackoverflow.design

This page claims that:

Stacks supports the last two stable versions of each major browser.

... listing two versions of several web browsers:

  • Chrome 103, 104
  • Edge 103, 104
  • Firefox 102, 103
  • Opera 88, 89
  • Safari 15.5, 15.6

But, these versions are not the "last two stable versions"; all of these browsers have since been updated:

  • Chrome 110
  • Edge 110
  • Firefox 110
  • Opera 95
  • Safari 16.3

Either, the text at the top of the page should be changed to not suggest that it is the latest versions that are supported.
Or, the list should be updated to include the actual latest versions that are supported.

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  • 3
    I think the employee responsible for updating those no longer works for SE, so that's why it hasn't been updated.
    – Sonic the Anonymous Hedgehog
    Commented Feb 27, 2023 at 1:09
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    Which is a fairly good argument that the page shouldn't list actual version numbers.
    – Makyen
    Commented Feb 27, 2023 at 1:20
  • This won't happen, as it requires a dedicated employee that would monitor the page daily, and I'm pretty sure that's not something SE are willing to spend money for. Much more likely they will delete that page, and leave "two latest versions" as the rule of thumb.
    – Shadow Wizard
    Commented Feb 27, 2023 at 9:28
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    I'm not sure about the others, but this doesn't really work for Safari anyway - Safari 15 is still fully supported by Apple, even though 16 is out. You can't have 16 unless you upgrade to Monterey or Ventura, yet 15 still runs on Big Sur, which itself is still fully-supported.
    – Tetsujin
    Commented Feb 27, 2023 at 16:55
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    @Tetsujin other browsers also don't really make sense since Chrome updates its major version every 4 weeks, thus theoretically SE only supports the last 2-month Chrome versions. However, the intent of that page is that SE can only guarantee that bugs on the last 2 versions will be fixed, unless it's an exceptional case.
    – Meta Andrew T.
    Commented Feb 28, 2023 at 13:50
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    I don't understand why it should ever be a manual process if the intent is truly "last two versions" of the listed browsers. That page list could be 100% dynamic, polling fresh data to the client on every page load, and yet it isn't. Why burden devs with updating the list if the entire point of the rule is for it to be dynamic ("last x versions" vs. "version x, y, z")?
    – zcoop98
    Commented Feb 28, 2023 at 19:49
  • @zcoop98 of course it can, if only SE had unlimited dev time. Sadly, they don't, and this is far far in the back of their backlog.
    – Shadow Wizard
    Commented Mar 4, 2023 at 18:46
  • (I wanted to keep this as one question, but I was advised to open a separate question asking for a permanent fix)
    – Elements In Space
    Commented Sep 5, 2023 at 11:45

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
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We have now automatized the process of updating the browsers versions shown in browsers.stackoverflow.design.

See also this answer for more context.

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This issue has been fixed. The reason these values don't update on-the-fly is because this is a static site that is generated from data that comes from the browserslist npm package. Updating the site is usually as simple as bumping this package version, committing, then letting the CI/CD pipeline redeploy the site. The team has put some thought into automating this process, but truthfully it's pretty low priority on our (quite large) task backlog.

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  • 4
    If you don't have automatic updates that happen often, then perhaps add wording to that pagesaying that the listed version numbers are as of a specific date, but that the browser version numbers which are actually supported may have changed as a result of a browser's later releases. It would also be good to link to pages from each browser manufacturer which show the versions which are actually current. Right now, that page becoming outdated makes the Stacks project, and Stack Overflow in general, appear to be a bit neglected.
    – Makyen
    Commented Mar 2, 2023 at 22:26
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    @Makyen Good idea! I very quickly added the "last generated on" date to the footer, next to the different package versions we're using. I agree that we could also add a disclaimer there to make it more obvious, but I think this approach is good enough for the short term. I may take an hour or so today to see if I can't (safely) autoupdate those dependencies using GH Actions.
    – Ben Kelly StaffMod
    Commented Mar 3, 2023 at 14:34
  • Sorry but there's no way this will be updated often. Until it's automated it's useless to have this page. Nothing personal, you're doing great job with your limited time, and so each and every developer. But in this case, it's the system that is basically broken. (In the few months it will take until someone will notice, post another bug report, and a dev will push the change, browsers will get lots of new versions.)
    – Shadow Wizard
    Commented Mar 4, 2023 at 18:44
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    Since the "completed" status won't be relevant in few weeks, also maybe better put it as status-deferred and change to completed if and when it is actually automated?
    – Shadow Wizard
    Commented Mar 4, 2023 at 18:47
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    It's been only a few months, and the list of latest browser versions is about 5 whole version numbers out of date. But I don't mind keeping this as the accepted answer if you can correct the first sentence (to "temporarily fixed" or similar), and change the tag from [status-complete] to [status-deferred].
    – Elements In Space
    Commented Jul 19, 2023 at 9:24
  • It's been a few weeks since my last comment. This issue has not been fixed, and it's incorrect that this bug report is tagged [status-complete]. So, I am unaccepting this answer.
    – Elements In Space
    Commented Aug 13, 2023 at 0:12
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    I have changed the status to [status-deferred]. We have created a task in our team's backlog to automate these deployments on a daily cadence. We should be able to get to it in the next few weeks. Thanks for your patience.
    – giamir StaffMod
    Commented Sep 5, 2023 at 10:58

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