How cross browser is backbone.js?

Question

We are working with several browser types - on web, mobile, tablet and smart-tv. We are looking into backbone.js for our mvc.

Is there any known cross browser limitations of backbone.js?

Answer 1

Backbone is developed to be as cross browser as possible. Even though they are using history api there is a fallback for it.

You can safely develop any modern web app using it.

Answer 2

I'm just starting to learn backbone.js but we had a browser related issue regarding the history.

This:

Backbone.history.start({pushState: true})

Has some trouble with older browsers.

That's all we've run into so far, but the project is still pretty new.

Here's a related link on backbone's github:

https://github.com/documentcloud/backbone/issues/173

Answer 3

I think this has less to do with Backbone then it has to do with the HTML and CSS you use. You can see a list of mobile uses of Backbone here: http://backbonejs.org/#examples. jQuery is commonly used together with Backbone and has a great track record of browser compatiblity. Check that out here: http://docs.jquery.com/Browser_Compatibility.

See also the backbone test suite mentioned by lwburk

Answer 4

c4urself's answer is good, but bringing things up to date with more recent evidence:

According to this comment by braddunbar in their github issues list, they don't have an official support document, but "to my knowledge Backbone supports IE6+, and the latest version of Chrome, Safari, Firefox, and Opera"

They have a test suite here which you can run in whatever browser you want in order to test support.

See also the support information for their dependencies:

• jQuery: http://docs.jquery.com/Browser_Compatibility
• Underscore: Can't find anything official either, but this comment on issue "Cut support for IE6-8 and other older browsers" by library author (of both underscore and backbone) jashkenas says "Underscore should always be a simple, single script that supports all of the environments you're likely to encounter as a JavaScript developer out of the box. Code that is written to work against one version of Underscore should just work, cross-platform."
• JSON-js: can't find anything explicit, but since the point of the library "are for applications that are expected to run in obsolete web browsers" that don't have the JSON object, I'd say that's not going to be an issue.