Browser compatibility during beta

This is a post by Calum Shepherd, our Head of Digital Strategy.

When thinking about our beta iteration of www.mygov.scot six months ago, we decided to firm up our understanding of which browsers we intended on supporting.

Compatibility decisions were based upon our understanding of who we thought would be using the website and their current browser choice and version. We used data from our alpha and a vastly more mature data set from www.gov.uk – allowing us to get the browser usage spread we needed to make some initial assumptions.

Compatibility decisions are split between the website and our publishing platform – as the intended audience is quite different. We know that people within Scottish Government will likely be running versions of Internet Explorer and don’t readily have access to mobile devices suitable for publishing.

Browser compatibility list 

Website

Full compatibility (with stylistic variations) with the following desktop browsers:

• Chrome
• Firefox
• Safari (OSX)
• Opera
• IE 8+

Full compatibility with the following mobile devices:

• Safari on iOS 5+
• Default browsers on Android 4.1+
• Blackberry 10
• Windows Phone

Limited compatibility (content visible and site navigable) on:

• XBox 360
• XBox 1
• PS3
• PS4

Limited compatibility (content visible and site navigable) on:

• other current desktop browsers (e.g. Opera)
• other current mobile and tablet browsers
• current smart TVs

Publishing platform

Full compatibility with the following desktop browsers:

• Chrome
• Firefox
• Safari (OSX)
• IE 9+

We’ll be sharing updates on this, and much more on social, so follow the team via @mygovscot on Twitter for more updates. Want to comment? Get in touch below!