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Highcharts and Highstock work in all modern browsers including mobile devices and Internet Explorer from version 6. Standard browsers use SVG for the graphics rendering. In legacy Internet Explorer (IE8 and before) graphics are drawn using VML.
Highcharts and Highstock run on any server that supports HTML. You can even run Highcharts locally from a filesystem, since all the rendering is done locally in a browser.
BROWSER COMPATIBILITY
We test our software on many browsers using the latest versions. Knowing that Internet Explorer users have a tendency not to upgrade we also systematically test older versions of that browser. Highcharts runs on the following browser versions:
Brand | Versions supported |
Internet Explorer | 6.0 + |
Firefox | 2.0 + |
Chrome | 1.0 + |
Safari | 4.0 + |
Opera | 9.0 + |
iOS (Safari) | 3.0 + |
Android Browser | 2.0 + *) |
*) Android browser 2.x has limited support, see below.
JAVASCRIPT FRAMEWORKS
Our products rely on external JavaScript frameworks to do DOM manipulation, animation and event handling. We try to keep the interface between our library and the JavaScript framework as small as possible, the adapter classes that serve as a bridge to the JavaScript frameworks are about 10 methods long.
We have built-in support for jQuery and we bundle adapter classes for use with Mootools and Prototype. The strategy we have chosen is to always test the latest versions (possibly with a small delay) and to also include the latest patch on earlier versions. Currently our test-framework runs unit tests for the following versions of javascript libraries:
jQuery | Mootools | Prototype |
1.8.2+ | 1.4.5 | 1.7 |
1.7.2 | 1.3.2 |
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1.6.2 | 1.2.5 |
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1.5.2 |
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1.4.4 |
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1.3.2 |
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Other versions may still work even though they are not tested.
RENDERING ENGINES AND PERFORMANCE
Different browsers support different rendering technologies, modern browsers have support for SVG but older versions of Internet Explorer do not, here we use VML to draw the graphs. This table describes the technologies we use in various browsers:
Browser version | Rendering technology | Rendering performance |
Microsoft Edge | SVG | Excellent |
Internet Explorer 9, 10, 11 | SVG | Excellent |
Internet Explorer 8 | VML | Ok |
Internet Explorer 7 | VML | Slow |
Internet Explorer 6 | VML | Slow |
Firefox | SVG | Excellent |
Chrome | SVG | Excellent |
Safari | SVG | Excellent |
Opera | SVG | Excellent |
iOS Safari | SVG | Ok |
Android 3+ | SVG | Ok |
Android 2.x | Canvas | Slow |
ANDROID 2.X
Android 2.x doesn't have SVG support built in, so we have created a separate renderer based on the canvg library for this system. This solution has some limitations: