"dead" needs refining

dead: browsers from last 2 version query, but with less than 0.5% in global usage statistics and without official support or updates for 24 months. Right now it is IE 10, IE_Mob 10, BlackBerry 10, and BlackBerry 7.

Even with not dead, browsers like:

• QQ Browser 1.2 (0% market share)
• Android Browser 62 (0% market share)
• Baidu Browser 7.12 (0% market share)
• Opera Mobile 12.1 (0% market share)
• Opera Mobile 37 (0.01% market share)
• Opera 49 (0.02% market share)
• etc

I think that the AND condition is the problem.

• It’s good because it means a version of chrome released 1 hour ago with less than 0.5% usage isn’t considered “dead”
• It’s bad because a browser that was released less than 2 years ago but has 0 users isn’t considered “dead”

Alternatives:

• “deadness” score
• “dead” is determined by age exceeding market share

[ai]

Regardless, you’re cherry picking and ignoring the logical issue

We use the same logic. The value is different. You try to reduce bundle size by removing unpopular (by your opinion) browsers. I try to force browsers diversity by adding local (in my opinion) browsers.

Because Browserslist is a community project we need to found a compromise between our values. First, let’s remove in out opinion part.

Let’s me explain my values. Opera was very popular in Russia. But not in US and Western Europe. So developers just ignored (especially when we start to have prefixes problem). Like why I should take care of the strange browser in some unknown cold country sine Opera global popularity was small. The same thing with a Linux. A lot of developers still don’t care about since it’s global popularity is about few %.

And this is an incredibly bad experience. But also it is very bad for everyone in long-term. All “sticking with IE” problems in the past we had only because developers support only popular browser (IE) and users use only browsers where all sites work. As result, popular IE becomes more popular and rest browsers died.

And we have the same problem right now with Chrome. If we will take care only about Firefox, Chrome, Safari, and Edge, it will kill all browsers innovations. But also it will make Web uncomfortable for other users outside of rich Western world with fast Internet and powerful smartphones.

So browsers diversity was one of the reasons why I created Autoprefixer. To stop ignoring other browsers in vendor prefixes. So Browserslist will always take care of browsers diversity.

But, of course, I am open to suggestions. We can remove browsers, which are unsafe for users (this is why dead contains browsers without security updates) to make Web safer place. Also, I can remove browsers if reallly nobody use it around the globe.

[unicodeveloper]

@ai I just got the information from my friend:

• 100M - Africa
• 25M - Nigeria alone

That’s several millions of users still actively using Opera Mini. 😄