Front-end minimum requirements

May 20, 2025 · 2 min read

Dedicated to the SBB (Swiss Federal Railways) ticket platform.

Back in the days when software was distributed via floppy/CDs, minimum system requirements were essential. Not only the OS, but also hardware specifications was matters, and software could refuse to run with low RAM/CPU. As the internet became mainstream, we started seeing a similar concept of requirements, but this time for the browser. Early web developers will remember how painful it was to support various versions of IE and Netscape, when the same HTML/JS code could run differently across browsers.

These days with modern web browsers, most applications ignore publishing requirements, but that doesn’t mean they’ve disappeared. Since most modern web applications are hostage to front-end frameworks, browser version requirements silently increase with each new release. Developers often assume frameworks handle backward compatibility, but that’s only partially true. In reality, many frameworks quietly drop support for older browsers. For instance, a React app built today may not run at all in a browser that’s just three years old.

At tirreno, even if we no longer print requirements on the box, we take browser compatibility seriously. We maintain support for browsers up to five years old and adopt new ECMAScript features slowly and carefully. This isn’t just about keeping up appearances, it’s about respecting the realities some of our users face. There are many valid reasons why someone might be stuck using older software, from corporate restrictions to hardware limitations, and we don’t want to be a “pain in the browser”.