Bug 258360 – [CSS Container Queries] Backporting Container Queries to Older Safari Versions

• Status: RESOLVED
• Resolution: INVALID
• Component: CSS

[Mateusz Daniluk]

Dear team,

As an active user and web developer, I greatly appreciate Apple’s commitment to pushing the envelope of web technologies, especially in the latest versions of Safari, which often lead the market in terms of innovation and new feature implementation.

However, through my user research, I’ve found that a significant proportion of users are still on iOS 15, and by extension, older versions of Safari 15, which do not support modern CSS solutions like container queries.

For many businesses, including my own, critical decisions about the development and deployment of new features on our websites hinge on backward compatibility, often maintained for at least the last three versions of the browser. This means that even though we would like to fully harness the potential of container queries, we’re unable to do so given the current limitations in older versions of Safari.

In light of this, I would like to suggest considering backporting support for container queries to older Safari versions, particularly those being used on iOS 15. This would enable us and many other developers to fully utilize this powerful CSS tool, while ensuring enhanced experiences for our users.

Additionally, I’m in the process of implementing a CSS Grid-based layout system, drawing inspiration from Bootstrap. My plan is to release this as an open source project, and the inclusion of container queries in older Safari versions would significantly contribute to the project’s success and usability across a wide range of devices.

Thank you for your time and consideration of this suggestion. I look forward to continued collaboration with Apple in shaping the future of web technologies.

Best Regards,
Mateusz Daniluk

[Alexey Proskuryakov]

Thank you for the feedback! This is really out of scope of the WebKit open source project. We will take it into consideration internally at Apple.