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SortSite Desktop version history

Contents

Versioning

Version numbers consists of 4 parts: Year.Release.Build.Patch

  • Year changes each year (in older releases this was a number like 6 or 5)
  • Release is the major version number - changes each maintenance release
  • Build is the build number - changes every release and is different on Mac and Windows for the same release version
  • Patch is always zero

Version numbers in older releases consisted of 4 parts: Change.Release.Build.Patch where Change only changed when compatibility was affected (e.g. when the file format changed).

Windows Releases

2026.61 Maintenance Release

Version: 2026.61.2076.0
Platform: Windows
Date: August 6, 2026

SortSite 2026.61 adds Web Bot Auth so you can scan Shopify stores, extends ARIA 1.3 support, and updates browser compatibility and validator data.

New Features

  • Further support for ARIA 1.3
  • Improved code snippets
  • Support for Web Bot Auth

Rule Changes

Fixes

  • Various stability fixes and performance improvements

2026.60 Maintenance Release

Version: 2026.60.2064.0
Platform: Windows
Date: April 30, 2026

SortSite 2026.60 brings redesigned reports, Scan Options in consistent places across Windows, Mac and Web, plus major SEO and Usability rule updates.

New Features

  • Redesigned reports with better summaries
  • Redesigned app home page
  • Scan Options now appear in consistent positions on Windows, Mac and Web apps
  • Improvements to app user interface
  • New option to validate legacy HTML 4 and XHTML with modern HTML validator
  • More support for ARIA 1.3

Rule Changes

  • Major updates to SEO and Usability rules
  • Added DuckDuckGo search guidelines
  • Retired obsolete rules for Usability.gov, IE11, Yahoo
  • Updated browser compatibility checks to Chrome/Edge 148, Firefox 150, Opera 130, Safari 26.3
  • Updated to April 2026 CSS Validator
  • Updated to April 2026 HTML Validator
  • See full list of changed rules in engine 2026.60

Fixes

  • Various stability fixes and performance improvements
  • Scheduler now runs as logged in user

6.59 Maintenance Release

Version: 6.59.2046.0
Platform: Windows
Date: December 20, 2025

New Features

  • Initial support for ARIA 1.3: new roles and attributes added, but several ARIA 1.2 attributes (e.g. aria-expanded, aria-placeholder) are now forbidden on additional roles

Rule Changes

  • Updated browser compatibility checks to Chrome/Edge 144, Firefox 146, Opera 125, Safari 26.3
  • Updated screen reader compatibility checks to NVDA 2025, JAWS 2025, macOS 15 and iOS 18
  • Updated to December 2025 HTML Validator
  • See full list of changed rules in engine 6.59

Fixes

  • Various stability fixes and performance improvements

6.58 Maintenance Release

Version: 6.58.2042.0
Platform: Windows
Date: October 18, 2025

New Features

  • Cascade support for nested CSS rules
  • Support for declarative shadow roots (shadowrootmode)
  • Validation of CSS in HTML style attributes

Rule Changes

  • Updated browser compatibility checks to Chrome/Edge 142, Firefox 144, Opera 122, Safari 26
  • Updated to October 2025 HTML Validator
  • Updated to October 2025 CSS Validator
  • Updated to August 2025 URL Standard
  • See full list of changed rules in engine 6.58

Fixes

  • Various stability fixes and performance improvements

6.57 Maintenance Release

Version: 6.57.2026.0 unsupported
Platform: Windows
Date: June 30, 2025

New Features

  • Added support for EN 301 549
  • Improved CSS error reporting

Rule Changes

Fixes

  • Various stability fixes and performance improvements

6.56 Maintenance Release

Version: 6.56.2018.0 unsupported
Platform: Windows
Date: March 31, 2025

New Features

  • Improvements to accessibility tree

Rule Changes

Fixes

  • Various stability fixes and performance improvements

6.55 Maintenance Release

Version: 6.55.2014.0 unsupported
Platform: Windows
Date: November 30, 2024

New Features

  • Added CSS code snippets to reports
  • Cascade support for @layer rules
  • Improved spell checking

Rule Changes

  • Updated browser compatibility checks to Chrome/Edge 132, Firefox 133
  • Updated screen reader compatibility checks to NVDA 2024, JAWS 2024, macOS 14 and iOS 17
  • Updated to October 2024 HTML Validator
  • Updated to November 2024 CSS Validator
  • See full list of changed rules in engine 6.55

Fixes

  • Various stability fixes and performance improvements

6.54 Maintenance Release

Version: 6.54.2008.0 unsupported
Platform: Windows
Date: October 18, 2024

New Features

  • Added HTML code snippets to reports
  • Improved text analysis

Rule Changes

  • Updated browser compatibility checks to Chrome/Edge 130, Firefox 131, Safari 18, Opera 114
  • Updated to September 2024 HTML Validator
  • Updated to September 2024 CSS Validator
  • Updates to ARIA 1.2 rules
  • See full list of changed rules in engine 6.54

Fixes

  • Various stability fixes and performance improvements

6.53 Maintenance Release

Version: 6.53.996.0 unsupported
Platform: Windows
Date: July 7, 2024

New Features

  • Added support for :state() and :popover-open selectors
  • Added support for CSS Text Module Level 4 properties
  • Improved positioning of issues in source view
  • Added crawl diagnostics to reports

Rule Changes

  • Updated browser compatibility checks to Chrome 127, Edge 127, Firefox 128, Opera 111
  • Updated to May 2024 HTML Validator
  • Updated to June 2024 CSS Validator
  • Updated to March 2024 URL Standard
  • See full list of changed rules in engine 6.53

Fixes

  • Various stability fixes and performance improvements

6.52 Maintenance Release

Version: 6.52.986.0 unsupported
Platform: Windows
Date: April 26, 2024

New Features

  • Improved CSS calc() support
  • Improved ARIA role calculation for table headers

Rule Changes

  • Updated browser compatibility checks to Chrome 124, Edge 124, Firefox 124, Opera 109
  • Updated to March 2024 HTML Validator
  • Updated to February 2024 URL Standard
  • See full list of changed rules in engine 6.52

Fixes

  • Fixed robots.txt processing of /core/*.css?
  • Take account of CSS pseudo elements in contrast calculations
  • Out of memory on large sites with many HTTP errors
  • Various stability fixes and performance improvements

6.51 Maintenance Release

Version: 6.51.980.0 unsupported
Platform: Windows
Date: December 19, 2023

New Features

  • Now checks iframe srcdoc contents
  • Improved background image text contrast detection
  • Improved CSS support

Rule Changes

  • Updated browser compatibility checks to Chrome 120, Edge 120, Firefox 120, Opera 105
  • Updated screen reader compatibility checks to NVDA 2023, JAWS 2023, macOS 13 and iOS 16
  • Updated to November 2023 HTML Validator
  • Updated to September 2023 URL Standard
  • Updated user agent stylesheet to match November 2023 HTML Living Standard
  • See full list of changed rules in engine 6.51

Fixes

  • Make DOM tree for unclosed formatting elements match browser DOM instead of W3 validator
  • Various stability fixes and performance improvements

6.50 Maintenance Release

Version: 6.50.968.0 unsupported
Platform: Windows
Date: October 5, 2023

New Features

  • Added support for WCAG 2.2. This includes longer firing 4.1.1 failures in WCAG 2.0 and 2.1
  • No longer reports SC 4.1.1 failures due to the removal of 4.1.1 from WCAG 2
  • Updated relative luminance per WCAG 2.1 Errata
  • Detect text contrast against background images
  • Updated report appearance
  • Improved CSS support

Rule Changes

Fixes

  • Ignore meta redirects inside noscript
  • Various stability fixes and performance improvements

6.49 Maintenance Release

Version: 6.49.962.0 unsupported
Platform: Windows
Date: May 31, 2023

New Features

  • Updated spelling dictionaries
  • Added support for additional CSS properties and at-rules

Rule Changes

  • Updated browser compatibility checks to Chrome 114, Edge 114, Firefox 114, Opera 99
  • Updated to May 2023 HTML Validator
  • Updated to May 2023 CSS Validator
  • Updated to May 2023 URL Standard
  • See full list of changed rules in engine 6.49

Fixes

  • Improved text classification of links in French, German, Italian and Spanish
  • Fix parsing of vue.js colon prefixed attributes like :aria-expanded
  • Various stability fixes and performance improvements

6.48 Maintenance Release

Version: 6.48.956.0 unsupported
Platform: Windows
Date: March 11, 2023

New Features

  • Added color samples next to rgb() values in reports
  • Further improvements to rule performance
  • Improved accessible name calculation for SVG elements

Rule Changes

Fixes

  • Fixed CSS var() replacement at end of minimized blocks
  • Various stability fixes and performance improvements

6.47 Maintenance Release

Version: 6.47.952.0 unsupported
Platform: Windows
Date: December 20, 2022

New Features

  • Improved detection of event handlers
  • Rules run 2x faster on large pages
  • Further updates for ARIA 1.2

Rule Changes

  • Updated browser compatibility checks to Chrome 108, Edge 108, Firefox 108, Opera 93, Safari 16
  • Updated to December 2022 HTML Validator
  • Updated to December 2022 CSS Validator
  • See full list of changed rules in engine 6.47

Fixes

  • Fixed cascading HTML validation errors when sub-trees contain nested invalid elements
  • Various stability fixes and performance improvements

6.46 Maintenance Release

Version: 6.46.946.0 unsupported
Platform: Windows
Date: September 13, 2022

New Features

  • Handle CSS variable substitutions like rgba( var(--rgb) var(--alpha) )
  • Handle CSS variable substitutions in shorthand properties
  • Rules run around 10% faster on large pages
  • CSS runs much faster on large pages

Rule Changes

  • Updated browser compatibility checks to Chrome 105, Edge 105, Firefox 104, Opera 90, Safari 15.6
  • Updated screen reader compatibility checks to NVDA 2022, JAWS 2022, macOS 12.5 and iOS 15.6
  • Updated to September 2022 HTML Validator
  • Updated to September 2022 CSS Validator
  • See full list of changed rules in engine 6.46

Fixes

  • Fixed some minor high contrast and dark mode issues
  • Fixed focus style match for body:focus-within button
  • Fixed issue running second instance of app when Edge WebView2 104 is installed
  • Various stability fixes and performance improvements

6.45 Maintenance Release

Version: 6.45.942.0 unsupported
Platform: Windows
Date: July 4, 2022

New Features

  • IE11 browser compatibility checks turned off by default now that IE11 is end-of-life on Windows 10
  • Screen reader compatibility checks for IE11 removed
  • CSS validation support for :has() relative selectors, content-visibility: and @media horizontal-viewport-segments and @media vertical-viewport-segments

Rule Changes

  • Updated browser compatibility checks to Chrome 103, Edge 103, Firefox 101, Opera 88, Safari 15.4
  • Updated to June 2022 HTML Validator
  • Updated to June 2022 CSS Validator
  • Updated to May 2022 URL Standard
  • Updates for ARIA 1.2 Candidate Recommendation
  • See full list of changed rules in engine 6.45

Fixes

  • Fixed leak with inherited CSS custom properties
  • Fixed "This issue was found on another 1 pages" appearing unexpectedly in reports
  • Various stability fixes and performance improvements

6.44 Maintenance Release

Version: 6.44.938.0 unsupported
Platform: Windows
Date: March 31, 2022

New Features

  • Added CSS support for @layer rules

Rule Changes

Fixes

  • Various stability fixes and performance improvements
  • Aligned robots.txt processing with Googlebot and latest IETF draft

6.43 Maintenance Release

Version: 6.43.934.0 unsupported
Platform: Windows
Date: December 28, 2021

New Features

  • Improved CSS support :focus-within, :focus-visible, rex, rcap, rch, ric length units

Rule Changes

  • Updated browser compatibility checks to Chrome 96, Edge 96, Firefox 95, Opera 82
  • Updated to December 2021 HTML Validator
  • Updated to December 2021 CSS Validator
  • See full list of changed rules in engine 6.43

Fixes

  • Various stability fixes and performance improvements

6.42 Maintenance Release

Version: 6.42.924.0 unsupported
Platform: Windows
Date: October 30, 2021

New Features

  • Improved CSS support including hwb(), lab() and lch() colors

Rule Changes

  • Updated browser compatibility checks to Chrome 95, Edge 95, Firefox 93, Opera 80, Safari 15
  • Updated screen reader compatibility checks to NVDA 2021, JAWS 2021, macOS 11.5 and iOS 14.7
  • Updated to October 2021 HTML Validator
  • Updated to October 2021 CSS Validator
  • See full list of changed rules in engine 6.42

Fixes

  • Various stability fixes and performance improvements

6.41 Maintenance Release

Version: 6.41.914.0 unsupported
Platform: Windows
Date: July 30, 2021

New Features

  • Improved CSS performance
  • Updated spelling dictionaries

Rule Changes

  • Updated browser compatibility checks to Chrome 92, Edge 92, Opera 77 and Firefox 90
  • Updated ARIA checks to ARIA in HTML Candidate Recommendation
  • Updated to July 2021 HTML Validator
  • Updated to June 2021 CSS Validator
  • Updated to July 2021 URL Standard
  • See full list of changed rules in engine 6.41

Fixes

  • Various stability fixes and performance improvements

6.40 Maintenance Release

Version: 6.40.904.0 unsupported
Platform: Windows
Date: January 31, 2021

New Features

  • User interface updated to match Mac version
  • Improved app appearance on high DPI displays
  • Improved appearance in Windows high contrast mode
  • Added support for Chromium WebView2 (https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/webview2/)
  • Replaced RTF export with DOCX export
  • Redesigned report inventory page
  • Removed SWF support due to Flash reaching end-of-life on Dec 31, 2020
  • Updated file format (SortSite 5 cannot read files saved by SortSite 6)

Rule Changes

  • Updated browser compatibility checks to Chrome 88, Edge 88, Opera 73 and Firefox 84
  • Updated to January 2021 HTML Validator
  • Updated to January 2021 CSS Validator
  • Removed obsolete WCAG 1.0, Section 508 (2000) options
  • Removed obsolete Privacy rules and BlackBerry compatibility checks
  • See full list of changed rules in engine 6.40

Fixes

  • Improved accessible description calculation
  • Various stability fixes and performance improvements

5.39 Maintenance Release

Version: 5.39.884.0 unsupported
Platform: Windows
Date: November 6, 2020

New Features

  • Added support for placeholder attribute in accessible name calculation
  • Added MIME Type column to Issue Report Excel export

Rule Changes

Fixes

  • Fixed out of memory issue affecting some sites
  • Handle deprecated HTML encodings like Windows-1252
  • Various stability fixes and performance improvements

5.38 Maintenance Release

Version: 5.38.880.0 unsupported
Platform: Windows
Date: July 31, 2020

New Features

  • Implemented presentational hint support for CSS
  • Align user agent stylesheet with HTML Standard
  • Align meta refresh parsing with HTML Standard
  • Improved detection of links with duplicate labels
  • Android compatibility reporting now uses Chromium web view version numbering

Rule Changes

  • Updated browser compatibility checks to Chrome 84, Edge 84 (Chromium), Firefox 78 and Opera 69
  • Updated to July 2020 HTML Validator
  • Updated to July 2020 CSS Validator
  • See full list of changed rules in engine 5.38

Fixes

  • Adding a link block for a single resource on a CDN sometimes blocked all resources on the CDN
  • CSS class selector didn't always match class attribute with multiple similar names (.daterange didn't match class='daterange-suffix daterange')
  • Replaced LibTidy with custom pretty printer to fix mangled DOM HTML
  • Various stability fixes and performance improvements

5.37 Maintenance Release

Version: 5.37.874.0 unsupported
Platform: Windows
Date: May 31, 2020

New Features

  • Additional ACT Rules
  • Link extraction from sitemap.xml
  • Improved link extraction from DOM
  • Implement ARIA presentational role conflict resolution
  • Updated text classifier
  • Updated spelling dictionaries

Rule Changes

  • Updated browser compatibility checks to Chrome 81, Edge 81 (Chromium), Firefox 76 and Opera 68
  • Updated to May 2020 HTML Validator
  • Updated to March 2020 CSS Validator
  • Updated to April 2020 URL Standard
  • See full list of changed rules in engine 5.37

Fixes

  • Empty elements were sometimes dropped from the DOM view
  • Wrong ID displayed for second ID error on page
  • Wrong attribute value displayed for second attribute value error for same attribute on page
  • Various stability fixes and performance improvements

5.36 Maintenance Release

Version: 5.36.866.0 unsupported
Platform: Windows
Date: January 31, 2020

New Features

  • Added support for ACT Rules
  • Defaults to checking WCAG 2.1 instead of WCAG 2.0

Rule Changes

  • Updated browser compatibility checks to Chrome 79, Edge 79 (Chromium), Firefox 72 and Opera 66
  • Updated screen reader compatibility checks to NVDA 2019, JAWS 2019, macOS 10.14 and iOS 12.4
  • Updated to January 2020 HTML Validator
  • Updated to January 2020 CSS Validator
  • Updated to November 2019 URL Standard
  • Updated SEO rules to Jan 2020 Google Search Guidelines
  • See full list of changed rules in engine 5.36

Fixes

  • Fixed ExpectedResults count in SortSite Developer
  • Various stability fixes and performance improvements

5.35 Maintenance Release

Version: 5.35.860.0 unsupported
Platform: Windows
Date: October 31, 2019

New Features

  • Improved CSS engine performance
  • Added Media Queries 4 range syntax: @media screen and (10px < width < 1000px)
  • Added alpha channel support to CSS contrast calculations
  • Improved accessible name calculation

Rule Changes

Fixes

  • Bring robots.txt processing into alignment with draft RFC
  • Fixed missing data in CSV exports
  • Various stability fixes and performance improvements

5.34 Maintenance Release

Version: 5.34.854.0 unsupported
Platform: Windows
Date: July 29, 2019

New Features

  • Improved CSS engine error handling
  • Improved CSS engine @charset support
  • Added CSS engine support for :any-link and :lang() selectors

Rule Changes

Fixes

  • Exporting RTF report failed when broken links contained specific characters
  • Various stability fixes and performance improvements

5.33 Maintenance Release

Version: 5.33.842.0 unsupported
Platform: Windows
Date: April 30, 2019

New Features

  • Improved CSS engine performance

Rule Changes

  • Updated screen reader compatibility checks to NVDA 2018, JAWS 2018 and no longer checks WindowEyes (product discontinued)
  • Updated compatibility checks to Chrome 74, Firefox 66 and Opera 60
  • Updated to April 2019 HTML Validator (W3 and WHATWG validators are now identical)
  • Updated to April 2019 CSS validator checks
  • See full list of changed rules in engine 5.33

Fixes

  • Scanning Flash SWF is disabled by default in preparation for Flash end of life in 2020
  • Various stability fixes and performance improvements

5.32 Maintenance Release

Version: 5.32.838.0 unsupported
Platform: Windows
Date: February 14, 2019

New Features

  • Improved message formatting
  • Improved CSS engine performance
  • CSS media query support
  • Updated scheduler in Pro edition with improved Windows 10 support
  • Export form replay data from Developer edition

Rule Changes

  • Updated compatibility checks to Chrome 71, Firefox 64, Opera 57 and Edge 18
  • Updated to January 2019 HTML Validator (W3 and WHATWG validators are now identical)
  • Updated to December 2018 CSS validator checks
  • Updated to December 2018 URL Standard
  • See full list of changed rules in engine 5.32

Fixes

  • PDFs created by Chrome weren't being scanned
  • Various stability fixes and performance improvements

5.31 Maintenance Release

Version: 5.31.830.0 unsupported
Platform: Windows
Date: November 23, 2018

New Features

  • Improved CSS engine implements full CSS cascade
  • Improved DOM snapshots
  • New accessibility rules for Word documents
  • Defaults to checking latest version of Safari on macOS

Rule Changes

  • Updated compatibility checks to Chrome 70, Firefox 63, iOS 12, Opera 55 and Safari 12
  • Updated to October 2018 HTML Validator checks
  • Updated to October 2018 CSS validator checks
  • See full list of changed rules in engine 5.31

Fixes

  • Various stability fixes and performance improvements

5.30 Maintenance Release

Version: 5.30.822.0 unsupported
Platform: Windows
Date: July 31, 2018

New Features

  • Added support for WCAG 2.1
  • Improved placeholder text detection
  • Defaults to checking IE11 instead of IE9, IE10 and IE11

Rule Changes

  • Updated compatibility checks to Chrome 68, Edge 17, Firefox 61 and Opera 54
  • Updated to July 2018 HTML Validator checks
  • Updated to July 2018 CSS validator checks
  • Updated to July 2018 URL Standard
  • See https://www.powermapper.com/products/sortsite/rules/sortsite-5.30/

Fixes

  • Server Busy dialog sometimes appeared on Windows 10 when basic authentication login window was shown
  • Various stability fixes

5.29 Maintenance Release

Version: 5.29.818.0 unsupported
Platform: Windows
Date: May 14, 2018

New Features

  • Better MIME sniffing when Content-Type header missing

Rule Changes

Fixes

  • Handle invalid UTF-8 sequences in Chinese PDF documents
  • Missed some text-node only DOM changes
  • Various stability fixes

5.28 Maintenance Release

Version: 5.28.810.0 unsupported
Platform: Windows
Date: December 31, 2017

New Features

  • Redesigned CSS parser with improved CSS level 3 support
  • Better line numbering for inserted DOM fragments

Rule Changes

  • Updated compatibility checks to Chrome 63, Firefox 58, Opera 49 and Edge 16
  • Updated to December 2017 HTML Validator checks
  • Updated to December 2017 version of URL Standard
  • See full list of changed rules in engine 5.28

Fixes

  • Various stability fixes

5.27 Maintenance Release

Version: 5.27.804.0 unsupported
Platform: Windows
Date: October 3, 2017

New Features

  • Enhancements to report appearance and improved issue details
  • Improved scan performance

Rule Changes

  • Updated compatibility checks to Firefox 56, Chrome 61, Opera 47, Safari 11 and iOS 11
  • Updated to September 2017 HTML Validator checks
  • Updated to August 2017 version of URL Standard
  • See full list of changed rules in engine 5.27

Fixes

  • Improved display of URLs in Arabic and Hebrew
  • Aligned robots.txt processing with Google's robots.txt specification
  • Various stability fixes

5.26 Maintenance Release

Version: 5.26.790.0 unsupported
Platform: Windows
Date: July 31, 2017

New Features

  • Detect animated PNGs and WebP images
  • Various performance enhancements

Rule Changes

  • Added screen reader compatibility checks
  • Updated browser compatibility checks to Firefox 54, Chrome 59, Opera 45
  • Updated to June 2017 version of URL Standard
  • Updated to June 2017 HTML Validator checks
  • See full list of changed rules in engine 5.26

Fixes

  • Better detection of duplicate pages
  • Various stability fixes

5.25 Maintenance Release

Version: 5.25.784.0 unsupported
Platform: Windows
Date: April 28, 2017

New Features

  • Added support for Section 508 Refresh
  • Various performance enhancements

Rule Changes

  • Updated compatibility checks to Firefox 53, Chrome 58, Opera 44, Edge 15
  • Updated to March 2017 version of URL Standard
  • Updated to March 2017 HTML Validator checks
  • See full list of changed rules in engine 5.25

Fixes

  • Various stability fixes

5.24 Maintenance Release

Version: 5.24.780.0 unsupported
Platform: Windows
Date: December 27, 2016

New Features

  • Enhanced detection of accessibility problems in Word documents
  • Various performance enhancements

Rule Changes

  • Updated compatibility checks to Firefox 51, Chrome 55, Opera 41
  • Updated to October 2016 version of Techniques for WCAG 2.0
  • Updated to December 2016 HTML Validator checks
  • See full list of changed rules in engine 5.24

Fixes

  • Various stability fixes

5.23 Maintenance Release

Version: 5.23.772.0 unsupported
Platform: Windows
Date: October 2, 2016

New Features

  • Export filename now based on site name
  • Better Source View of minified files
  • Additional CSS3 support
  • Privacy rules disabled by default

Rule Changes

Fixes

  • Various stability fixes
  • Didn't reset all settings in Factory Reset
  • Fixed layout problem with high resolution displays on Windows

5.22 Maintenance Release

Version: 5.22.764.0 unsupported
Platform: Windows
Date: July 5, 2016

New Features

  • Changed default for Internet Explorer compatibility from IE 7.0 to IE 8.0
  • Improved appearance of printed reports
  • Reduced memory requirements on large sites
  • Much faster scanning large PDFs

Rule Changes

Fixes

  • Various stability fixes

5.21 Maintenance Release

Version: 5.21.754.0 unsupported
Platform: Windows
Date: March 30, 2016

New Features

  • Much faster starting app
  • Support for WiX sites
  • Support spellcheck HTML attribute
  • Minor tweaks to report UI

Rule Changes

  • Updated compatibility checks to Firefox 46, Chrome 49 and Opera 36
  • Updated to March 2016 HTML Validator checks (VNU 16.3.3)
  • Updated to March 2016 version of Techniques for WCAG 2.0
  • See full list of changed rules in engine 5.21

Fixes

  • Blocked links were ignored for 301 and 302 redirects
  • Various stability fixes

5.20 Maintenance Release

Version: 5.20.748.0 unsupported
Platform: Windows
Date: January 28, 2016

New Features

  • Parse external SVG images
  • Minor tweaks to report UI

Rule Changes

  • Updated compatibility checks to Firefox 44, Chrome 47, Opera 34 and Edge 13
  • Updated to January 2016 HTML Validator checks (VNU 16.1.1)
  • Further implementation of Matterhorn Protocol
  • See full list of changed rules in engine 5.20

Fixes

  • Stopped bogus DOM changes and CSS warnings appearing inside SVG element
  • Was unable to scan pages that returned '201 Created' HTTP code instead of '200 OK'
  • Display warning if user tries to check Welcome page of application
  • Handle regex literal / division operator ambiguity in JavaScript parser
  • Handle name spaced attributes in HTML 5
  • Fix issue with CSS cascade in DOM
  • Various stability fixes

5.10 Maintenance Release

Version: 5.10.736.0 unsupported
Platform: Windows
Date: October 2, 2015

New Features

  • Updated spelling dictionaries for English and French
  • Export and Import settings now include user agent

Rule Changes

  • Updated compatibility checks to Firefox 41, Chrome 45, Opera 32, Safari 9 and Edge
  • Updated to September 2015 HTML Validator checks
  • Initial implementation of Matterhorn Protocol
  • More reporting of user impact for screen reader problems
  • See full list of changed rules in 5.10

Fixes

  • Problem extracting links from pages with invalid HEAD element
  • Cancelling a scan on a large site could take a long time
  • Fixed spell check issue inside NOFRAMES
  • Didn't detect missing ALT for some types of PDF graphics
  • Wasn't able to scan when starting from an Angular #routing URL
  • Reduced memory consumption on sites with lots of W3 validation errors

5.9 Maintenance Release

Version: 5.9.726.0 unsupported
Platform: Windows
Date: June 30, 2015

New Features

  • Updated benchmarks to latest data
  • Converted exported HTML reports to HTML5

Rule Changes

Fixes

  • Better help if site is blocked due to robots.txt
  • Removed bogus characters that appeared when Excel CSV reports opened in Excel for Mac
  • Fixed problem with some JavaScript links being case folded
  • Fixed hex entity handling in links
  • HTML5: Fixed problem with validation on pages with deeply nested DIVs
  • HTML5: The CS language code (Czech) was incorrectly reported as deprecated
  • HTML5: Treat role attribute as space separated list of ARIA roles
  • HTML5: Fix problem validating camel case SVG attributes like viewBox

5.8 Maintenance Release

Version: 5.8.718.0 unsupported
Platform: Windows
Date: March 30, 2015

New Features

  • Added more information to the Issue Report and Link Report Excel exports
  • Added more control over applying JavaScript DOM changes to Options window
  • Removed obsolete Java applet and CGI scripts options (can be done via blocked links)

Rule Changes

  • Updated compatibility checks to Firefox 37, Chrome 41, Opera 28
  • Updated to February 2015 version of Techniques for WCAG 2.0
  • Updated to March 2015 HTML Validator checks
  • See full list of changed rules in 5.8

Fixes

  • Redirected pages display redirected URL instead of original URL
  • Improvements handling AngularJS sites
  • SVG elements incorrectly flagged as invalid in HTML5 doctype

5.7 Maintenance Release

Version: 5.7.704.0 unsupported
Platform: Windows
Date: December 30, 2014

New Features

  • Various minor UI enhancements

Rule Changes

Fixes

  • Fixed issue extracting links from some invalid HTML files
  • Treat `http://www.example.com` and `http://www.example.com:80` as same site, but `http://www.example.com:888` as different site
  • Fixed problem scanning some PDFs
  • Treat en-US and en-us as same language

5.6 Maintenance Release

Version: 5.6.690.0 unsupported
Platform: Windows
Date: September 17, 2014

New Features

  • Added support for Angular.js routing and Backbone/Angular/Mustache templates
  • Added picker for choosing browser version for compatibility rules

Rule Changes

  • Updated to September 2014 version of Techniques and Failures for WCAG 2.0
  • Updated compatibility checks to Firefox 32, Chrome 37, Opera 24 and iOS 8
  • Updated to August 2014 HTML Validator checks
  • See full list of changed rules in 5.6

Fixes

  • Fixed problem checking corrupt PDFs
  • Fixed problem checking deeply nested HTML5 files

5.5 Maintenance Release

Version: 5.5.678.0 unsupported
Platform: Windows
Date: May 22, 2014

New Features

  • Added Factory Reset button to Options window
  • Spell check meta descriptions and titles
  • End of scan notification if app is in background
  • Modernized default user agent string

Rule Changes

  • Updated compatibility checks to Firefox 29, Chrome 35 and Opera 21
  • Updated to April 2014 HTML Validator checks
  • Updated to April 2014 version of Techniques and Failures for WCAG 2.0
  • See full list of changed rules in 5.5

5.4 Maintenance Release

Version: 5.4.668.0 unsupported
Platform: Windows
Date: February 14, 2014

New Features

  • Added Open in New Window to right-click menu
  • Added Check for Updates command to Help menu

Fixes

  • Incorrect DOM changes applied inside TABLEs without TBODYs using XHTML 1.0 or 1.1 DOCTYPEs
  • Stability improvements

Rule Changes

  • Update compatibility checks to IE 11, Safari 7, Firefox 26, Chrome 31 and Opera 17
  • Updated to December 2013 HTML Validator checks
  • See full list of changed rules in 5.4

5.3 Maintenance Release

Version: 5.3.640.0 unsupported
Platform: Windows
Date: September 16, 2013

New Features

  • Improved RTF export formatting in wider range of word processors
  • Much faster scanning some sites that were very slow to scan in previous versions

Fixes

  • Allow long user agent strings to be pasted into Options window
  • Added support for PDF updates contained in XRefStms
  • Treat robots.txt 401s and 403s the same as 404s
  • Problem detecting broken links on sites that alias /page-name to /page-name/ and redirect from one to the other
  • Fixed several problems scanning DOM
  • Fixed crash scanning corrupt Excel and MP3 files
  • Crash when printing empty map with no pages

Rule Changes

  • Update compatibility checks to iOS 7, Firefox 24 and Chrome 29
  • Updated to Sept 2013 HTML Validator checks
  • Updated to Sept 2013 Techniques for WCAG2
  • See full list of changed rules in 5.3

5.2 Maintenance Release

Version: 5.2.618.0 unsupported
Platform: Windows
Date: May 29, 2013

New Features

  • Can now pause scans
  • Exported HTML files are saved into a newly created sub-directory

Fixes

  • Prevent PC going to sleep during a scan (unless battery low)
  • Increased capacity of Additional Urls box in the New window
  • Stats displayed in dashboard no longer affected by "pages shown for each issue" limit
  • Improved stability in low memory conditions

Rule Changes

  • Update compatibility checks to Firefox 21 and Chrome 27
  • Updated to May 2013 HTML 5.0 validator checks
  • Updated to April 2013 edition of Usability.gov guidelines
  • Accessibility problems that only appear in specific browsers, now say which browsers are affected
  • See full list of changed rules in 5.2

5.1 Maintenance Release

Version: 5.1.596.0 unsupported
Platform: Windows
Date: January 30, 2013

New Features

  • Added "What was Tested" tab to report
  • Updated search engine rules
  • Updated HTML 5.0 validation to December 2012 Candidate Recommendation
  • No longer scans for IE 6 problems by default (use Choose Rules to scan for IE 6 problems)

Fixes

  • Links with query parameters sometimes not extracted correctly from PDF files
  • Performance enhancements scanning large documents
  • Fixed crash scanning corrupt PDFs and PowerPoint files

Rule Changes

5.0 Maintenance Release

Version: 5.0.592.0 unsupported
Platform: Windows
Date: October 31, 2012

New Features

  • Record and replay form actions (Pro version only)
  • Detect changes made to pages by JavaScript
  • Update compatibility checks to IE10, Firefox 16, Chrome 22, iOS 6, Safari 6, Opera 12
  • Choose which browsers to test for browser compatibility
  • HTML 5 validation
  • Compliance tab is now labeled Privacy to reflect the issues it reports
  • Performance improvements (2x faster scanning some sites)
  • Removed "Link limit for running rules" setting (rules now run on pages with any number of links)

Fixes

  • Fixed excessive memory use on some sites
  • Embedded browser now renders in standards mode

Rule Changes

4.7 Maintenance Release

Version: 4.7.564.0 unsupported
Platform: Windows
Date: June 12, 2012

New Features

  • Detect bogus rel=canonical links, which can cause massive loss of search traffic
  • Excel exports include multiple line numbers, rather than just the first line number a problem occurred on
  • Added Excel Inventory report export
  • Added support for Chrome 20 and Firefox 14

Fixes

  • The compatibility report summary counted disabled rules as failures
  • Switching tabs in options window added duplicate items to user agent dropdown
  • Fixed poor performance scanning PDFs with hundreds of pages

Rule Changes

  • Don't warn about vendor specific tags now standardized in HTML5 draft
  • Restrict deprecated rules to the HTML version they're deprecated in (some items deprecated in HTML4 are no longer deprecated in HTML5)
  • Fixed various false positives and false negatives
  • See full list of changed rules in 4.7

4.6 Maintenance Release

Version: 4.6.540.0 unsupported
Platform: Windows
Date: February 29, 2012

New Features

  • Added View Source command to right click menu
  • Updated W3 DTDs to match validator.w3.org (pulls in fix for USEMAP in XHTML 1.1 Second Edition)
  • Added compatibility checks for Firefox 9,10,11 and Chrome 16,17 versions
  • Added support for CSS3 properties that have reach candidate recommendation status

Fixes

  • Don't detect broken anchors in non-standard CSS e.g. behavior:url(#default#SaveFavorite)
  • Various false positives
  • False negative: didn't detect empty headings
  • False negative: <A ONCLICK> with no HREF cannot be operated from keyboard
  • Changed accessibility rules in 4.6

4.5 Maintenance Release

Version: 4.5.522.0 unsupported
Platform: Windows
Date: November 14, 2011

New Features

  • Added "Remove Word" command to spelling context menu
  • Added support for iOS 5, plus recent Firefox and Chrome versions
  • Replaced Rule Id column with guidelines column in Issue Report - Excel (Rule Id was an internal identifier)

Fixes

  • Word RTF report displayed current date instead of date report exported
  • 100% CPU processing HTML files containing very large base 64 XML data islands
  • Markup like Emphasis was being reported as a spelling error
  • Wrong line numbers sometimes reported for broken anchors
  • Links with invalid URL schemes weren't reported as broken (e.g. "Hhttpp://example.com")
  • Fixed problem where some URLs were displayed double encoded
  • F1 key in New and About windows displayed an error message
  • URLs typed into New window now added to recent URLs list
  • Added timeouts to WHOIS lookups
  • Fixed false positives
  • Changed accessibility rules in 4.5

4.4 Maintenance Release

Version: 4.4.500.0 unsupported
Platform: Windows
Date: August 5, 2011

New Features

  • Added "Copy Link Address" command to context menu
  • Added BlackBerry, Firefox 5 and Chrome 12 to browser compatibility tests
  • Added auto complete for forms
  • Added "Ignore Capitalized" option to spell checker

Fixes

  • Expand All button in reports was slow on large sites with lots of errors
  • Handle pages that specify different charsets in HTTP headers and META tags
  • Handle windows-1256 (Arabic) correctly in rules
  • Greatly reduced memory consumption running rules on large pages
  • Fixed false positives and false negatives
  • Changed accessibility rules in 4.4

4.3 Maintenance Release

Version: 4.3.460.0 unsupported
Platform: Windows
Date: April 2, 2011

New Features

  • Updated browser compatibility tests to IE9, Opera 11 and Chrome 10
  • Allow custom user agent to be specified
  • Additional iOS and Android compatibility rules

Fixes

4.2 Maintenance Release

Version: 4.2.432.0 unsupported
Platform: Windows
Date: December 1, 2010

New Features

  • Added compatibility rules for iPad / iPhone
  • Added ability to check lists of pages (e.g. landing pages)
  • Add ErrEmptyLink rule for detecting IMG SRC=""
  • Now reports list of pages blocked by robots.txt
  • Updated Google and Bing guidelines

Fixes

  • Problem displaying Source View for local files using ISO-8859-1 characters which don't specify encoding
  • Much faster switching between tabs on reports for very large sites
  • Fixed various false positives
  • Changed accessibility rules in 4.2

4.1 Maintenance Release

Version: 4.1.418.0 unsupported
Platform: Windows
Date: August 31, 2010

New Features

  • Added support for Windows-1256 (Arabic) and Windows-1255, ISO-8859-8 (Hebrew) charsets
  • Added list of HTTP headers to Source View page
  • Moved Back to Report command to Back button dropdown

Fixes

  • Crash on some PDFs encrypted using AES encryption
  • Heap corruption on PDFs with long attribute values
  • Stability improvements in low memory conditions
  • Allow words with apostrophes (e.g. O'Connell) to be added to dictionary
  • Changed accessibility rules in 4.1

4.0 Maintenance Release

Version: 4.0.394.0 unsupported
Platform: Windows
Date: June 2, 2010

New Features

  • Added English and French spell checking
  • Added accessibility and link checking inside PDF documents
  • Added link checking inside Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents
  • Allow #anchor links to be blocked
  • Added Firefox 3.6 / Chrome 4.0 to compatibility report
  • Added support for <LINK REL="canonical" HREF="..." >
  • Added support for Lotus Domino
  • Added required text rules (for checking analytics tags and disclaimers are present on every page)
  • Added "Automatic Login" option

Fixes

  • Scheduled site scans didn't pick up some site changes
  • Intermittent I/O pending error message when doing two Save As commands in a row
  • Fixed various false positives
  • Validation errors no longer reported on linked pages when using Check Pages and Links
  • Stability improvements
  • Changed accessibility rules in 4.0

3.5 Maintenance Release

Version: 3.5.344.0 unsupported
Platform: Windows
Date: December 18, 2009

New Features

  • New Check Folder command (replaces "Follow Upwards Links" options checkbox)
  • User interface improvements including customizable toolbars
  • Added Firefox 3.5 compatibility checks
  • Added Bing search engine guidelines
  • Support for Windows 7

Fixes

  • Fixed several false positives
  • View Source showing blank pages when HTML meta tag specified invalid charset

3.4 Maintenance Release

Version: 3.4.314.0 unsupported
Platform: Windows
Date: September 23, 2009

New Features

  • Extract sitemap directive from robots.txt
  • Allow user to specify reading age of site audience
  • Add expand all option to report pages
  • Split large report pages
  • Initial support for HTML 5

Fixes

  • HTML entity references for accented uppercase European characters converted the accented chars to lowercase
  • Clarified WCAG vs WCAG2 priorities in reports
  • Non-responsive for long period if cannot contact WHOIS server
  • Fixed several false positives
  • Guideline names missing in Word RTF report
  • Clearer error message when entire site blocked by robots.txt
  • Print command was disabled for View Source pages

3.3 Maintenance Release

Version: 3.3.298.0 unsupported
Platform: Windows
Date: June 1, 2009

New Features

  • Certified for Windows Vista
  • Restore session state on Vista if app running when Windows Update restarts system
  • Only show report tabs for active rule categories
  • Added SeoBlankTitle rule for titles containing only spaces

Fixes

  • Improved site structuring
  • Fixed various false positives
  • Fixed a loop affecting sites with a broken 404 handler and having an image with an empty SRC attribute
  • Handle accented characters in UTF-8 encoded web pages better
  • SEO keywords occurring after a flash movie were ignored
  • Double dot appearing in export file names
  • View Source didn't display issues for empty pages with no source code
  • Fixed memory leak loading saved reports

3.2 Maintenance Release

Version: 3.2.288.0 unsupported
Platform: Windows
Date: April 2, 2009

Fixes

  • Excess use of disk space scanning large sites
  • Handle CSS contextual selectors
  • Can't display Choose Rules window after using angle brackets custom error strings

3.1 Maintenance Release

Version: 3.1.276.0 unsupported
Platform: Windows
Date: February 4, 2009

Features

  • Accessibility compatibility summary
  • Browser compatibility summary
  • Browser compatibility rules for IE8 and Chrome
  • Page Weight rules

Fixes

  • Several false positives
  • "Not enough system resources" message on some machines
  • Crash on sites with malformed A tag on home page
  • Increased upper limit for Max Issues Per Page edit box

3.0 Maintenance Release

Version: 3.0.264.0 unsupported
Platform: Windows
Date: December 15, 2008

Features

  • WCAG2 accessibility guidelines
  • Rule chooser dialog
  • Import/export rule settings

Fixes

  • Reduced memory consumption during scan
  • Improved performance at end of scan
  • Improved stability in low memory conditions
  • Fixed hang affecting some sites
  • Progress indicator appears if view source takes a while to display
  • Faster saving reports
  • Fixed false positives

2.8 Maintenance Release

Version: 2.8.252.0 unsupported
Platform: Windows
Date: October 22, 2008

Features

  • Use site directory structure to guide map structure

Fixes

  • Reduced memory consumption when drawing large reports
  • Prevent saving a SortSite report over a PowerMapper site map
  • Fixed a race condition when logging was turned off while writing to log

2.0 Maintenance Release

Version: 2.0.197.0 unsupported
Platform: Windows
Date: December 14, 2007

Features

  • Added Section 508 accessibility guidelines
  • Added "how to fix" help for issues
  • Added inventory
  • Added site map
  • Added page readability statistics
  • New installer gives better user experience on Vista
  • Scorecard of individual standards compliance
  • Basic RSS reader

Fixes

  • Uses less memory drawing and exporting maps
  • Extract links from FlashObject/SWFObject

1.0 Maintenance Release

Version: 1.0.170.0 unsupported
Platform: Windows
Date: February 20, 2007

Features

  • Initial release for Windows

Mac Releases

2026.61 Maintenance Release

Version: 2026.61.4076.0
Platform: macOS
Date: September 7, 2026

SortSite 2026.61 adds Web Bot Auth so you can scan Shopify stores, extends ARIA 1.3 support, and updates browser compatibility and validator data.

New Features

  • Further support for ARIA 1.3
  • Improved code snippets
  • Support for Web Bot Auth

Rule Changes

Fixes

  • Various stability fixes and performance improvements

2026.60 Maintenance Release

Version: 2026.60.4062.0
Platform: macOS
Date: June 18, 2026

SortSite 2026.60 brings redesigned reports, Scan Options in consistent places across Windows, Mac and Web, plus major SEO and Usability rule updates.

New Features

  • Redesigned reports with better summaries
  • Redesigned app home page
  • Scan Options now appear in consistent positions on Windows, Mac and Web apps
  • Improvements to app user interface
  • New option to validate legacy HTML 4 and XHTML with modern HTML validator
  • More support for ARIA 1.3

Rule Changes

  • Major updates to SEO and Usability rules
  • Added DuckDuckGo search guidelines
  • Retired obsolete rules for Usability.gov, IE11, Yahoo
  • Updated browser compatibility checks to Chrome/Edge 148, Firefox 150, Opera 130, Safari 26.3
  • Updated to April 2026 CSS Validator
  • Updated to April 2026 HTML Validator
  • See full list of changed rules in engine 2026.60

Fixes

  • Various stability fixes and performance improvements

6.59 Maintenance Release

Version: 6.59.4046.0
Platform: macOS
Date: January 19, 2026

New Features

  • Initial support for ARIA 1.3: new roles and attributes added, but several ARIA 1.2 attributes (e.g. aria-expanded, aria-placeholder) are now forbidden on additional roles

Rule Changes

  • Updated browser compatibility checks to Chrome/Edge 144, Firefox 146, Opera 125, Safari 26.3
  • Updated screen reader compatibility checks to NVDA 2025, JAWS 2025, macOS 15 and iOS 18
  • Updated to December 2025 HTML Validator
  • See full list of changed rules in engine 6.59

Fixes

  • Various stability fixes and performance improvements

6.58 Maintenance Release

Version: 6.58.4042.0
Platform: macOS
Date: November 3, 2025

New Features

  • Cascade support for nested CSS rules
  • Support for declarative shadow roots (shadowrootmode)
  • Validation of CSS in HTML style attributes

Rule Changes

  • Updated browser compatibility checks to Chrome/Edge 142, Firefox 144, Opera 122, Safari 26
  • Updated to October 2025 HTML Validator
  • Updated to October 2025 CSS Validator
  • Updated to August 2025 URL Standard
  • See full list of changed rules in engine 6.58

Fixes

  • Various stability fixes and performance improvements

6.57 Maintenance Release

Version: 6.57.4026.0 unsupported
Platform: macOS
Date: July 25, 2025

New Features

  • Added support for EN 301 549
  • Improved CSS error reporting

Rule Changes

Fixes

  • Various stability fixes and performance improvements

6.56 Maintenance Release

Version: 6.56.4018.0 unsupported
Platform: macOS
Date: April 17, 2025

New Features

  • Improvements to accessibility tree
  • Now ships as a universal binary for Apple Silicon and Intel-based Macs

Rule Changes

Fixes

  • Various stability fixes and performance improvements

6.55 Maintenance Release

Version: 6.55.4014.0 unsupported
Platform: macOS
Date: January 14, 2025

New Features

  • Added CSS code snippets to reports
  • Cascade support for @layer rules
  • Improved spell checking

Rule Changes

  • Updated browser compatibility checks to Chrome/Edge 132, Firefox 133
  • Updated screen reader compatibility checks to NVDA 2024, JAWS 2024, macOS 14 and iOS 17
  • Updated to October 2024 HTML Validator
  • Updated to November 2024 CSS Validator
  • See full list of changed rules in engine 6.55

Fixes

  • Various stability fixes and performance improvements

6.54 Maintenance Release

Version: 6.54.4008.0 unsupported
Platform: macOS
Date: October 18, 2024

New Features

  • Added HTML code snippets to reports
  • Improved text analysis

Rule Changes

  • Updated browser compatibility checks to Chrome/Edge 130, Firefox 131, Safari 18, Opera 114
  • Updated to September 2024 HTML Validator
  • Updated to September 2024 CSS Validator
  • Updates to ARIA 1.2 rules
  • See full list of changed rules in engine 6.54

Fixes

  • Various stability fixes and performance improvements

6.53 Maintenance Release

Version: 6.53.1996.0 unsupported
Platform: macOS
Date: August 22, 2024

New Features

  • Added support for :state() and :popover-open selectors
  • Added support for CSS Text Module Level 4 properties
  • Improved positioning of issues in source view
  • Added crawl diagnostics to reports

Rule Changes

  • Updated browser compatibility checks to Chrome 127, Edge 127, Firefox 128, Opera 111
  • Updated to May 2024 HTML Validator
  • Updated to June 2024 CSS Validator
  • Updated to March 2024 URL Standard
  • See full list of changed rules in engine 6.53

Fixes

  • Various stability fixes and performance improvements

6.52 Maintenance Release

Version: 6.52.1986.0 unsupported
Platform: macOS
Date: June 11, 2024

New Features

  • Improved CSS calc() support
  • Improved ARIA role calculation for table headers

Rule Changes

  • Updated browser compatibility checks to Chrome 124, Edge 124, Firefox 124, Opera 109
  • Updated to March 2024 HTML Validator
  • Updated to February 2024 URL Standard
  • See full list of changed rules in engine 6.52

Fixes

  • Fixed robots.txt processing of /core/*.css?
  • Take account of CSS pseudo elements in contrast calculations
  • Out of memory on large sites with many HTTP errors
  • Various stability fixes and performance improvements

6.51 Maintenance Release

Version: 6.51.1980.0 unsupported
Platform: macOS
Date: January 4, 2024

New Features

  • Scan Options window updated to match Windows and Web editions
  • Now checks iframe srcdoc contents
  • Improved background image text contrast detection
  • Improved CSS support

Rule Changes

  • Updated browser compatibility checks to Chrome 120, Edge 120, Firefox 120, Opera 105
  • Updated screen reader compatibility checks to NVDA 2023, JAWS 2023, macOS 13 and iOS 16
  • Updated to November 2023 HTML Validator
  • Updated to September 2023 URL Standard
  • Updated user agent stylesheet to match November 2023 HTML Living Standard
  • See full list of changed rules in engine 6.51

Fixes

  • Make DOM tree for unclosed formatting elements match browser DOM instead of W3 validator
  • Various stability fixes and performance improvements

6.50 Maintenance Release

Version: 6.50.1972.0 unsupported
Platform: macOS
Date: October 17, 2023

New Features

  • Added support for WCAG 2.2
  • Updated relative luminance per WCAG 2.1 Errata https://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG21/errata/
  • Detect text contrast against background images
  • Updated report appearance
  • Improved CSS support

Rule Changes

Fixes

  • Fix instability caused by faulty system library in macOS 14
  • Ignore meta redirects inside noscript
  • Various stability fixes and performance improvements

6.49 Maintenance Release

Version: 6.49.1962.0 unsupported
Platform: macOS
Date: July 11, 2023

New Features

  • Updated spelling dictionaries
  • Added support for additional CSS properties and at-rules

Rule Changes

  • Updated browser compatibility checks to Chrome 114, Edge 114, Firefox 114, Opera 99
  • Updated to May 2023 HTML Validator
  • Updated to May 2023 CSS Validator
  • Updated to May 2023 URL Standard
  • See full list of changed rules in engine 6.49

Fixes

  • Improved text classification of links in French, German, Italian and Spanish
  • Fix parsing of vue.js colon prefixed attributes like :aria-expanded
  • Various stability fixes and performance improvements

6.48 Maintenance Release

Version: 6.48.1956.0 unsupported
Platform: macOS
Date: April 17, 2023

New Features

  • Added color samples next to rgb() values in reports
  • Further improvements to rule performance
  • Improved accessible name calculation for SVG elements

Rule Changes

Fixes

  • Fixed CSS var() replacement at end of minimized blocks
  • Various stability fixes and performance improvements

6.47 Maintenance Release

Version: 6.47.1952.0 unsupported
Platform: macOS
Date: February 6, 2023

New Features

  • Improved detection of event handlers
  • Rules run 2x faster on large pages
  • Further updates for ARIA 1.2

Rule Changes

  • Updated browser compatibility checks to Chrome 108, Edge 108, Firefox 108, Opera 93, Safari 16
  • Updated to December 2022 HTML Validator
  • Updated to December 2022 CSS Validator
  • See full list of changed rules in engine 6.47

Fixes

  • Fixed cascading HTML validation errors when sub-trees contain nested invalid elements
  • Various stability fixes and performance improvements

6.46 Maintenance Release

Version: 6.46.1942.0 unsupported
Platform: macOS
Date: October 11, 2022

New Features

  • Handle CSS variable substitutions like rgba( var(--rgb) var(a--alpha) )
  • Handle CSS variable substitutions in shorthand properties
  • Rules run around 10% faster on large pages
  • CSS runs much faster on large pages

Rule Changes

  • Updated browser compatibility checks to Chrome 105, Edge 105, Firefox 104, Opera 90, Safari 15.6
  • Updated screen reader compatibility checks to NVDA 2022, JAWS 2022, macOS 12.5 and iOS 15.6
  • Updated to September 2022 HTML Validator
  • Updated to September 2022 CSS Validator
  • See full list of changed rules in engine 6.46

Fixes

  • Fixed some minor high contrast and dark mode issues
  • Fixed focus style match for body:focus-within button
  • Various stability fixes and performance improvements

6.45 Maintenance Release

Version: 6.45.1940.0 unsupported
Platform: macOS
Date: July 20, 2022

New Features

  • Reorganized Compatibility preference pane under Scan Options - Checkpoints
  • IE11 browser compatibility checks turned off by default now that IE11 is end-of-life on Windows 10
  • Screen reader compatibility checks for IE11 removed
  • CSS validation support for :has() relative selectors, content-visibility: and @media horizontal-viewport-segments and @media vertical-viewport-segments

Rule Changes

  • Updated browser compatibility checks to Chrome 103, Edge 103, Firefox 101, Opera 88, Safari 15.4
  • Updated to June 2022 HTML Validator
  • Updated to June 2022 CSS Validator
  • Updated to May 2022 URL Standard
  • Updates for ARIA 1.2 Candidate Recommendation
  • See full list of changed rules in engine 6.45

Fixes

  • Fixed leak with inherited CSS custom properties
  • Fixed "This issue was found on another 1 pages" appearing unexpectedly in reports
  • Various stability fixes and performance improvements

6.44 Maintenance Release

Version: 6.44.1936.0 unsupported
Platform: macOS
Date: May 26, 2022

New Features

  • Added CSS support for @layer rules

Rule Changes

Fixes

  • Aligned robots.txt processing with Googlebot and latest IETF draft
  • Implemented support for checking sites with non-persistent authentication cookies
  • Fixed issue with Scan Schedule window hanging when opened
  • Various stability fixes and performance improvements

6.43 Maintenance Release

Version: 6.43.1934.0 unsupported
Platform: macOS
Date: January 31, 2021

New Features

  • Improved CSS support :focus-within, :focus-visible, rex, rcap, rch, ric length units

Rule Changes

  • Updated browser compatibility checks to Chrome 96, Edge 96, Firefox 95, Opera 82
  • Updated to December 2021 HTML Validator
  • Updated to December 2021 CSS Validator
  • See full list of changed rules in engine 6.43

Fixes

  • Various stability fixes and performance improvements

6.42 Maintenance Release

Version: 6.42.1926.0 unsupported
Platform: macOS
Date: November 22, 2021

New Features

  • Improved CSS support including hwb(), lab() and lch() colors

Rule Changes

  • Updated browser compatibility checks to Chrome 95, Edge 95, Firefox 93, Opera 80, Safari 15
  • Updated screen reader compatibility checks to NVDA 2021, JAWS 2021, macOS 11.5 and iOS 14.7
  • Updated to October 2021 HTML Validator
  • Updated to October 2021 CSS Validator
  • See full list of changed rules in engine 6.42

Fixes

  • Print... and Find... didn't work on macOS 11/12
  • Various stability fixes and performance improvements

6.41 Maintenance Release

Version: 6.41.1914.0 unsupported
Platform: macOS
Date: September 16, 2021

New Features

  • Improved CSS performance
  • Updated spelling dictionaries

Rule Changes

  • Updated browser compatibility checks to Chrome 92, Edge 92, Opera 77 and Firefox 90
  • Updated ARIA checks to ARIA in HTML Candidate Recommendation
  • Updated to July 2021 HTML Validator
  • Updated to June 2021 CSS Validator
  • Updated to July 2021 URL Standard
  • See full list of changed rules in engine 6.41

Fixes

  • Various stability fixes and performance improvements

6.40 Maintenance Release

Version: 6.40.1908.0 unsupported
Platform: macOS
Date: June 30, 2021

New Features

  • Replaced RTF export with DOCX export
  • Redesigned report inventory page
  • Removed SWF support due to Flash reaching end-of-life on Dec 31, 2020
  • Updated file format (SortSite 5 cannot read files saved by SortSite 6)

Rule Changes

  • Updated browser compatibility checks to Chrome 88, Edge 88, Opera 73 and Firefox 84
  • Updated to January 2021 HTML Validator
  • Updated to January 2021 CSS Validator
  • Removed obsolete WCAG 1.0, Section 508 (2000) options
  • Removed obsolete Privacy rules and BlackBerry compatibility checks
  • See full list of changed rules in engine 6.40

Fixes

  • Improved accessible description calculation
  • Various stability fixes and performance improvements

5.39 Maintenance Release

Version: 5.39.1886.0 unsupported
Platform: macOS
Date: November 20, 2020

New Features

  • Added support for placeholder attribute in accessible name calculation
  • Added MIME Type column to Issue Report Excel export

Rule Changes

Fixes

  • Fixed out of memory issue affecting some sites
  • Handle deprecated HTML5 encodings like Windows-1252
  • Various stability fixes and performance improvements

5.38 Maintenance Release

Version: 5.38.1880.0 unsupported
Platform: macOS
Date: August 26, 2020

New Features

  • Implemented presentational hint support for CSS
  • Align user agent stylesheet with HTML Standard
  • Align meta refresh parsing with HTML Standard
  • Improved detection of links with duplicate labels
  • Android compatibility reporting now uses Chromium web view version numbering

Rule Changes

  • Updated browser compatibility checks to Chrome 84, Edge 84 (Chromium), Firefox 78 and Opera 69
  • Updated to July 2020 HTML Validator
  • Updated to July 2020 CSS Validator
  • See full list of changed rules in engine 5.38

Fixes

  • Adding a link block for a single resource on a CDN sometimes blocked all resources on the CDN
  • CSS class selector didn't always match class attribute with multiple similar names (.daterange didn't match class='daterange-suffix daterange')
  • Replaced LibTidy with custom pretty printer to fix mangled DOM HTML
  • Various stability fixes and performance improvements

5.37 Maintenance Release

Version: 5.37.1874.0 unsupported
Platform: macOS
Date: June 27, 2020

New Features

  • Additional ACT Rules
  • Link extraction from sitemap.xml
  • Improved link extraction from DOM
  • Implement ARIA presentational role conflict resolution
  • Updated text classifier
  • Updated spelling dictionaries

Rule Changes

  • Updated browser compatibility checks to Chrome 81, Edge 81 (Chromium), Firefox 76 and Opera 68
  • Updated to May 2020 HTML Validator
  • Updated to March 2020 CSS Validator
  • Updated to April 2020 URL Standard
  • See full list of changed rules in engine 5.37

Fixes

  • Empty elements were sometimes dropped from the DOM view
  • Wrong ID displayed for second ID error on page
  • Wrong attribute value displayed for second attribute value error for same attribute on page
  • Various stability fixes and performance improvements

5.36 Maintenance Release

Version: 5.36.1866.0 unsupported
Platform: macOS
Date: February 10, 2020

New Features

  • Added support for ACT Rules
  • Defaults to checking WCAG 2.1 instead of WCAG 2.0

Rule Changes

  • Updated browser compatibility checks to Chrome 79, Edge 79 (Chromium), Firefox 72 and Opera 66
  • Updated screen reader compatibility checks to NVDA 2019, JAWS 2019, macOS 10.14 and iOS 12.4
  • Updated to January 2020 HTML Validator
  • Updated to January 2020 CSS Validator
  • Updated to November 2019 URL Standard
  • Updated SEO rules to Jan 2020 Google Search Guidelines
  • See full list of changed rules in engine 5.36

Fixes

  • Fixed ExpectedResults count in SortSite Developer
  • Various stability fixes and performance improvements

5.35 Maintenance Release

Version: 5.35.1862.0 unsupported
Platform: macOS
Date: November 21, 2019

New Features

  • Improved CSS engine performance
  • Added Media Queries 4 range syntax: @media screen and (10px < width < 1000px)
  • Added alpha channel support to CSS contrast calculations
  • Improved accessible name calculation
  • Legacy plugins are disabled (no longer supported by Safari/Chrome/Firefox)

Rule Changes

Fixes

  • Bring robots.txt processing into alignment with draft RFC
  • Fixed missing data in CSV exports
  • Various stability fixes and performance improvements

5.34 Maintenance Release

Version: 5.34.1854.0 unsupported
Platform: macOS
Date: August 28, 2019

New Features

  • Improved CSS engine error handling
  • Improved CSS engine @charset support
  • Added CSS engine support for :any-link and :lang() selectors

Rule Changes

Fixes

  • Exporting RTF report failed when broken links contained specific characters
  • Various stability fixes and performance improvements

5.33 Maintenance Release

Version: 5.33.1838.0 unsupported
Platform: macOS
Date: June 11, 2019

New Features

  • Improved CSS engine performance

Rule Changes

  • Updated screen reader compatibility checks to NVDA 2018, JAWS 2018 and no longer checks WindowEyes (product discontinued)
  • Updated browser compatibility checks to Chrome 74, Firefox 66 and Opera 60
  • Updated to April 2019 HTML Validator (W3 and WHATWG validators are now identical)
  • Updated to April 2019 CSS validator checks
  • See full list of changed rules in engine 5.33

Fixes

  • Scanning Flash SWF is disabled by default in preparation for Flash end of life in 2020
  • Various stability fixes and performance improvements

5.32 Maintenance Release

Version: 5.32.1836.0 unsupported
Platform: macOS
Date: March 18, 2019

New Features

  • Improved message formatting
  • Improved CSS engine performance
  • CSS media query support

Rule Changes

  • Updated compatibility checks to Chrome 71, Firefox 64, Opera 57 and Edge 18
  • Updated to January 2019 HTML Validator (W3 and WHATWG validators are no identical)
  • Updated to December 2018 CSS validator checks
  • Updated to December 2018 URL Standard
  • See full list of changed rules in engine 5.32

Fixes

  • Fix redirects where Content-Type changed during redirect
  • PDFs created by Chrome weren't being scanned
  • Various stability fixes and performance improvements

5.31 Maintenance Release

Version: 5.31.1826.0 unsupported
Platform: macOS
Date: November 22, 2018

New Features

  • Added support for Dark Mode in macOS Mojave (version 10.14)
  • Improved CSS engine implements full CSS cascade
  • Improved DOM snapshots
  • New Accessibility rules for Word documents
  • Defaults to checking latest version of Safari on macOS

Rule Changes

  • Updated compatibility checks to Chrome 70, Firefox 63, iOS 12, Opera 55 and Safari 12
  • Updated to October 2018 HTML Validator checks
  • Updated to October 2018 CSS validator checks
  • See full list of changed rules in engine 5.31

Fixes

  • Fixes for various crashes affecting macOS Mojave (version 10.14)
  • Various stability fixes and performance improvements

5.30 Maintenance Release

Version: 5.30.1808.0 unsupported
Platform: macOS
Date: August 6, 2018

New Features

  • Added support for WCAG 2.1
  • Improved placeholder text detection

Rule Changes

  • Updated compatibility checks to Chrome 68, Edge 17, Firefox 61 and Opera 54
  • Updated to July 2018 HTML Validator checks
  • Updated to July 2018 CSS validator checks
  • Updated to July 2018 URL Standard
  • See full list of changed rules in engine 5.30

Fixes

  • Various stability fixes

5.29 Maintenance Release

Version: 5.29.1806.0 unsupported
Platform: macOS
Date: May 17, 2018

New Features

  • Better MIME sniffing when Content-Type header missing

Rule Changes

Fixes

  • Handle invalid UTF-8 sequences in Chinese PDF documents
  • Missed some text-node only DOM changes
  • Various stability fixes

5.28 Maintenance Release

Version: 5.28.1804.0 unsupported
Platform: macOS
Date: January 22, 2018

New Features

  • Redesigned CSS parser with improved CSS level 3 support
  • Better line numbering for inserted DOM fragments

Rule Changes

  • Updated compatibility checks to Chrome 63, Firefox 58, Opera 49 and Edge 16
  • Updated to December 2017 HTML Validator checks
  • Updated to December 2017 version of URL Standard
  • See full list of changed rules in engine 5.28

Fixes

  • Various stability fixes

5.27 Maintenance Release

Version: 5.27.1802.0 unsupported
Platform: macOS
Date: November 9, 2017

New Features

  • Enhancements to report appearance and improved issue details
  • Improved scan performance

Rule Changes

  • Updated compatibility checks to Firefox 56, Chrome 61, Opera 47, Safari 11 and iOS 11
  • Updated to September 2017 HTML Validator checks
  • Updated to August 2017 version of URL Standard
  • See full list of changed rules in engine 5.27

Fixes

  • Improved display of URLs in Arabic and Hebrew
  • Aligned robots.txt processing with Google's robots.txt specification
  • Better speech output in VoiceOver
  • Various stability fixes

5.26 Maintenance Release

Version: 5.26.1794.0 unsupported
Platform: macOS
Date: August 2, 2017

New Features

  • Various performance enhancements
  • Detect animated PNGs and WebP images

Rule Changes

  • Added screen reader compatibility checks
  • Updated compatibility checks to Firefox 54, Chrome 59, Opera 45
  • Updated to June 2017 HTML Validator checks
  • Updated to June 2017 version of URL Standard
  • See full list of changed rules in engine 5.26

Fixes

  • Various stability fixes
  • Better detection of duplicate pages

5.25 Maintenance Release

Version: 5.25.1790.0 unsupported
Platform: macOS
Date: May 18, 2017

New Features

  • Added support for Section 508 Refresh
  • Various performance enhancements
  • Find command
  • Redesigned welcome page

Rule Changes

  • Updated compatibility checks to Firefox 53, Chrome 58, Opera 44, Edge 15
  • Updated to March 2017 HTML Validator checks
  • Updated to March 2017 version of URL Standard
  • See full list of changed rules in engine 5.25

Fixes

  • Various stability fixes

5.24 Maintenance Release

Version: 5.24.1780.0 unsupported
Platform: macOS
Date: January 27, 2017

New Features

  • Enhanced detection of accessibility problems in Word documents
  • Various performance enhancements

Rule Changes

  • Updated compatibility checks to Firefox 51, Chrome 55, Opera 41
  • Updated to October 2016 version of Techniques for WCAG 2.0
  • Updated to December 2016 HTML Validator checks
  • See full list of changed rules in engine 5.24

Fixes

  • Various stability fixes

5.23 Maintenance Release

Version: 5.23.1772.0 unsupported
Platform: macOS
Date: October 25, 2016

New Features

  • Additional CSS3 support
  • Privacy rules disabled by default

Rule Changes

Fixes

  • Various stability fixes
  • Didn't reset all settings in Factory Reset

5.22 Maintenance Release

Version: 5.22.1766.0 unsupported
Platform: macOS
Date: July 14, 2016

New Features

  • Changed default for Internet Explorer compatibility from IE 7.0 to IE 8.0
  • Improved appearance of printed reports
  • Much faster scanning large PDFs
  • Reduced memory requirements on large sites

Rule Changes

Fixes

  • Various stability fixes

5.21 Maintenance Release

Version: 5.21.1756.0 unsupported
Platform: macOS
Date: April 8, 2016

New Features

  • Form replayer
  • Minor tweaks to report UI
  • Allow scanning popup login pages
  • Support Mac system proxy settings
  • Support for WiX sites
  • Support spellcheck HTML attribute

Rule Changes

  • Updated compatibility checks to Firefox 46, Chrome 49 and Opera 36
  • Updated to March 2016 version of Techniques for WCAG 2.0
  • Updated to March 2016 HTML Validator checks (VNU 16.3.3)
  • See full list of changed rules in engine 5.21

Fixes

  • Blocked links were ignored for 301 and 302 redirects
  • Various stability fixes

5.0 Maintenance Release

Version: 5.0.1750.0 unsupported
Platform: macOS
Date: January 28, 2016

New Features

  • Parse external SVG images
  • Minor tweaks to report UI
  • Much faster starting
  • Replaced Breakpad crash reporter with Crashpad

Rule Changes

  • Updated compatibility checks to Firefox 44, Chrome 47, Opera 34 and Edge 13
  • Updated to January 2016 HTML Validator checks (VNU 16.1.1)
  • Further implementation of Matterhorn Protocol
  • See full list of changed rules in engine 5.20

Fixes

  • Stopped bogus DOM changes and CSS warnings appearing inside SVG element
  • Was unable to scan pages that returned '201 Created' HTTP code instead of '200 OK'
  • Display warning if user tries to check Welcome page of application
  • Handle regex literal / division operator ambiguity in JavaScript parser
  • Handle name spaced attributes in HTML 5
  • Fix issue with CSS cascade in DOM
  • Fix mislabelled fields in Reports tab of Scan Options
  • Various stability fixes

4.0 Maintenance Release

Version: 4.0.1740.0 unsupported
Platform: macOS
Date: November 17, 2015

New Features

  • Updated spelling dictionaries for English and French
  • Export and Import settings now include user agent
  • Can scan sites using HTTP basic authentication

Rule Changes

  • Updated compatibility checks to Firefox 41, Chrome 45, Opera 32, Safari 9 and Edge
  • Updated to September 2015 HTML Validator checks
  • Initial implementation of Matterhorn Protocol
  • More reporting of user impact for screen reader problems
  • See full list of changed rules in scan engine 5.10

Fixes

  • Problem extracting links from pages with invalid HEAD element
  • Cancelling a scan on a large site could take a long time
  • Fixed spell check issue inside NOFRAMES
  • Didn't detect missing ALT for some types of PDF graphics
  • Wasn't able to scan when starting from an Angular #routing URL
  • Reduced memory consumption on sites with lots of W3 validation errors
  • Fixed a crash on OS X 10.11
  • Fixed a problem where report sometimes wasn't displayed

3.0 Maintenance Release

Version: 3.0.1730.0 unsupported
Platform: macOS
Date: July 28, 2015

New Features

  • Added Export and Import Settings commands
  • Added scheduler
  • Updated benchmarks to latest data
  • Converted exported HTML reports to HTML5

Rule Changes

Fixes

  • Better help if site is blocked due to robots.txt
  • Removed bogus characters that appeared when Excel CSV reports opened in Excel for Mac
  • Fixed problem with some JavaScript links being case folded
  • Fixed hex entity handling in links
  • HTML5: Fixed problem with validation on pages with deeply nested DIVs
  • HTML5: The CS language code (Czech) was incorrectly reported as deprecated
  • HTML5: Treat role attribute as space separated list of ARIA roles
  • HTML5: Fix problem validating camel case SVG attributes like viewBox

2.0 Maintenance Release

Version: 2.0.1720.0 unsupported
Platform: macOS
Date: May 7, 2015

New Features

  • Added more information to the Issue Report and Link Report Excel exports
  • Added more control over applying JavaScript DOM changes to Options window
  • Removed obsolete Java applet and CGI scripts options (can be done via blocked links)
  • Added print command

Rule Changes

Fixes

  • Redirected pages display redirected URL instead of original URL
  • Improvements handling AngularJS sites
  • SVG elements incorrectly flagged as invalid in HTML5 doctype
  • HTTP header names should be case-insensitive

1.0 Maintenance Release

Version: 1.0.1702.0 unsupported
Platform: macOS
Date: January 9, 2015

Features

  • Initial release for Mac OS X, based on SortSite 5.7 for Windows