Bug 26305

Created attachment 109217 [details] [review]
Bug 26305: Detect Internet Explorer and show warning in Staff Interface

Koha no longer works with Internet Explorer. Since this change,
and Microsoft's own dropping of support for IE is quite recent,
let us show a banner warning staff interface users, so they
can understand why Koha does not work as expected when they try
to use it in IE.

This patch detects a Microsoft property in the window object,
and displays an alert banner, when one uses Koha's staff
interface in Internet Explorer.

To test:
1) Go to http://localhost:8081 in Internet Explorer
2) Note the banner that says the following:
"Koha no longer supports the Internet Explorer browser. Please
use a supported browser such as Firefox, Chrome, or Edge."

Created attachment 109218 [details]
Screenshot of IE warning

I haven't gotten any responses on Bugzilla or via the listserv, but I will start running this locally very soon. I'm happy to report back on our local experience.

Created attachment 109629 [details] [review]
Bug 26305: Detect Internet Explorer and show warning in Staff Interface

Koha no longer works with Internet Explorer. Since this change,
and Microsoft's own dropping of support for IE is quite recent,
let us show a banner warning staff interface users, so they
can understand why Koha does not work as expected when they try
to use it in IE.

This patch detects a Microsoft property in the window object,
and displays an alert banner, when one uses Koha's staff
interface in Internet Explorer.

To test:
1) Go to http://localhost:8081 in Internet Explorer
2) Note the banner that says the following:
"Koha no longer supports the Internet Explorer browser. Please
use a supported browser such as Firefox, Chrome, or Edge."

Signed-off-by: Henry Bolshaw <bolshawh@parliament.uk>

Tested on sandbox. I can confirm that the warning banner appeared in IE but did not appear in Chrome, Edge or Firefox.

(In reply to Henry Bolshaw from comment #5)
> Tested on sandbox. I can confirm that the warning banner appeared in IE but
> did not appear in Chrome, Edge or Firefox.

Cheers!

(In reply to David Cook from comment #0)
> I frequently get people raising issues about Koha not working because
> they're using Internet Explorer.
> 
> While I think it is very sensible for Koha not to support IE, I think it
> might be useful in this transitional time to show a warning banner on the
> Staff Interface to tell users that they can't use IE anymore and expect Koha
> to work.

Ten years ago we couldnt use the staff client either with Internet Explorer. You speak here about "not .. anymore" and "transitional time". I dont understand. What happened? Where are you referring to? Which transition?

Shouldnt we speak about "Does not support" ?
Until now we 'tolerated' use of IE like "on your own risk". Do we really need an agressive banner like the one here?

Moving to In discussion

(In reply to Marcel de Rooy from comment #7)
> Ten years ago we couldnt use the staff client either with Internet Explorer.

That's not correct. I've supported Internet Explorer for Koha for about 8.5 years now. I've contributed a few patches to Koha to provide Internet Explorer support over the years. 

> You speak here about "not .. anymore" and "transitional time". I dont
> understand. What happened? Where are you referring to? Which transition?
 
Microsoft will no longer support Internet Explorer for their own apps like Office 365 starting from November 2020. 

> Shouldnt we speak about "Does not support" ?
> Until now we 'tolerated' use of IE like "on your own risk". Do we really
> need an agressive banner like the one here?
 
I don't think it's aggressive. Quite the opposite. I think it's user-friendly. It improves UX, since users will see the problem is their browser, rather than the problem being a broken Koha. 

As I noted above, I'm constantly getting complaints from people saying that Koha is broken in the staff interface, even after I tell them they can't use Internet Explorer anymore (before 19.11 they could still use IE 11). 

So I will be applying a patch like like locally very soon, but I figured I'd contribute it back to the community, as I'm sure other people will be having this same issue.

(In reply to David Cook from comment #8)

Thanks for your feedback.

> > Ten years ago we couldnt use the staff client either with Internet Explorer.
> That's not correct. I've supported Internet Explorer for Koha for about 8.5
> years now. I've contributed a few patches to Koha to provide Internet
> Explorer support over the years. 

Well, it is correct. We already use Koha for more than 10 years in production. And all the time I have been redirecting our staff users away from IE. Such recommendations were found in the wiki and documentation too. I dont recall any exact issues anymore, but some things just didnt work in IE (related to some standard Javascript things?). Display stuff?

> > You speak here about "not .. anymore" and "transitional time". I dont
> > understand. What happened? Where are you referring to? Which transition?
> Microsoft will no longer support Internet Explorer for their own apps like
> Office 365 starting from November 2020. 

Okay. That is more clear.

(In reply to Marcel de Rooy from comment #9)
> Well, it is correct. We already use Koha for more than 10 years in
> production. And all the time I have been redirecting our staff users away
> from IE. Such recommendations were found in the wiki and documentation too.
> I dont recall any exact issues anymore, but some things just didnt work in
> IE (related to some standard Javascript things?). Display stuff?
 
I've had librarians using the Koha staff interface with IE for the last 10 years. While it may not have been recommended, I made it work for them, because they had no other options than IE for browsers at their workplaces. (That's changing with Microsoft pushing Edge over IE.)

Typically, it was Javascript issues, but in many cases I was able to fix them using fairly simple feature detection.

Technically, I could actually make master Koha work in IE by transpiling the Javascript, but with Edge being available it's just not worth the effort anymore. Edge represents a viable alternative to IE for corporate IT. 

> > > You speak here about "not .. anymore" and "transitional time". I dont
> > > understand. What happened? Where are you referring to? Which transition?
> > Microsoft will no longer support Internet Explorer for their own apps like
> > Office 365 starting from November 2020. 
> 
> Okay. That is more clear.

No worries. It's an exciting time!

Moving back to SO. Thx for feedback

Text in .js files requires __( to be translatable. _( can only be used in templates. See: https://wiki.koha-community.org/wiki/Coding_Guidelines#JS5:_Enabling_translation_of_language_strings_in_linked_JavaScript But I believe as the .js file in question is outside of the language directories, this won't work there either.

I am not sure, but do we really want this check on every page? Would it not be enough to warn on the start page maybe?

(In reply to Katrin Fischer from comment #12)
> Text in .js files requires __( to be translatable. _( can only be used in
> templates. See:
> https://wiki.koha-community.org/wiki/Coding_Guidelines#JS5:
> _Enabling_translation_of_language_strings_in_linked_JavaScript But I believe
> as the .js file in question is outside of the language directories, this
> won't work there either.
> 

Ahh good to know. I'll look at fixing that.

> I am not sure, but do we really want this check on every page? Would it not
> be enough to warn on the start page maybe?

That's a good point, although in theory we never know how people access the staff client. If they're using browser bookmarks, it could be possible to avoid the start page I think.

Is this WONTFIX by now?

(In reply to Owen Leonard from comment #14)
> Is this WONTFIX by now?

Yeah for sure. Done!