As of August 1, 2011, Google Apps will support modern browsers ONLY.
Users of Firefox 3.5, IE7 and Safari 3 (and their predecessors) take note! Gmail, Google Calendar, Talk, Docs and Sites will not work correctly on these older versions. Eventually they will stop working at all if you do not upgrade your browser to a more up to date version.
What is a modern browser according to Google Apps?
For Google Apps, “modern browser” has two parts. “Modern” refers to current and prior major releases. Support will be maintained on a rolling basis going forward.
Opera browser
The second part is “browser”, specifically, one of the following:
- Chrome
- Firefox
- Internet Explorer
- Safari
Opera is conspicuously absent, which may irk some European users.
Web browser market share
The following is a chart of desktop browser usage rates. Data was provided by StatCounter.
Desktop browser usage, Oct 2010 - Sep 2011
Safari is twice as popular as Opera, though a 4.26% market share is small compared to the top three. Safari is part of the larger Apple product line. Maybe that is the justification for Google’s decision to include Safari but not Opera.
Conjecture
The modern browser support announcement was specifically for Google Apps, though it may include all Google accounts at some point. I am uncertain. Perhaps Opera is not as often used by Google Apps and enterprise customers as Safari?
