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SU21 was released late 2020. 17/11/2020
it’ll loose direct access to the web services after 3 years and 3 month.
As Francis said, it’s been this way for a few years now, web services are directly available on the last 3 versions. For older versions, you have to go to the browser version.
https://extensions.sketchup.com/
the company’s goal is to have all its customers on a subscription.
actively giving you solutions to help you NOT buy a subscription is not in their interest.
See, all these web services inside SU are just that, webpages accessible from a browser. and designed as such.
Now, webdesigners and developpers, when they make a website, make sure it’s compatible with the last few years of technologies and browsers, so even a computer stuck with a 2y-old browser will still read the website. or most of it. but with every browser release, you’ll be more and more stranded on a shrinking internet.
but considering you can always update your browser and/or your machine, they don’t need to make sure all the techs they used are compatible with older ones. Try reinstalling a browser version from 3 years ago and use it, you’ll have some weird surprises, because devs rely on recent techs and our ability to easily keep updated.
SU contains a piece of chromium to access the web tools.
Chromium 88 was released 5 days before SU21. safe to say therefore that SU21 had a pre-88 version onboard.
Current version is 118.
Asking SU21 to remain compatible with all webtools is asking the devs to maintain and develop a set of websites compatible with a 30 version gap of chromium or more. Basically asking them to keep working with the tools from 3 years ago to ensure compatibility, instead of using the current ones.
They could. but just like the vast majority of webdevs, they decided to draw a line in the sand. 3 SU versions, in their case.
It’s not just a SU thing. it’s a web thing. it’s how internet is managed now, it has been for quite some time.
Check out Netflix’s requirement.
They require Chrome 102, from june 2022. turns out Sketchup has a broader support than netflix.