Respondents
Standard surveys created in SmartSurvey should work in most recent browsers. While we can’t rule out unexpected behaviour on highly unusual or very old devices, we strive for maximum accessibility for respondents.
Note that any use of custom Javascript or CSS can cause a survey to break, particularly on older browsers. It is very difficult to determine what browser combinations will support all of the features you might add to custom code. We recommend that if you want to support a large number of older browsers, that you avoid using custom code or CSS or that you commission significant cross-browser testing with a testing company.
Likewise, any custom changes you make to your theme might not display as expected across all browsers, in some cases looking significantly different/broken compared to modern browsers.
Users
The SmartSurvey app, which is what users access to create and manage their surveys, supports the latest versions of the following browsers:
- Chrome
- Firefox
- Edge
- Opera
- Safari
Attempting to access the app using unsupported browsers may cause the app to be difficult or impossible to use. The new pages in the App do NOT support IE11 and will not work correctly or at all.
Some effort is made to make the app usable on mobiles and tablets but not all pages will render neatly and some functionality will not work.
For independent advice on the latest versions of popular browsers, visit outdatedbrowser.com
If you’re unsure about what to do, or are experiencing issues on a supported browser, contact support@smartsurvey.co.uk or raise a support ticket.
Why do you not support browser X?
Browsers are much more complex that they appear to many end-users. Some browsers do not support certain functionality and others support it in ways that differ between different browsers. Although modern browsers are much more compliant with standards than older browsers, every additional quirk that we need to support involves additional code that works around the quirk in a way that makes the site work in a consistent way.
As you attempt to support more and more older browsers, the amount of additional code is significant, which slows down the experience for all users, especially on older devices or those with a slow network connections.
In addition, lots of newer frameworks have been made possible by not supporting older browsers, enabling them to create smaller consistent frameworks without trying to cover every single edge-case.
We appreciate that there will always be people on devices that do not have a satisfactory experience on Surveys or the Application but we hope that these numbers are very small.