Privacy, performance and browsers | Porchlight docs

What Porchlight stores and loads, what it never does, and where it has been tested.

Privacy

Porchlight has no tracking, analytics or cookies of its own.
In the visitor's browser it remembers three preferences: light or dark mode, a closed announcement, and the last tab chosen in tabbed articles.
For the length of the visit only, it keeps the order number typed in Track your order (to fill the request form) and the help center's topic list (so pages don't ask for it again). Closing the tab clears both.
Order tracking: the order number, and the email address when your tracking link asks for it, go only to the tracking page you set in Tracking link, in its address. Porchlight sends them nowhere else.
Support hours: Open now is worked out in the visitor's browser from your hours and time zone. Nothing is fetched.
Fonts: web fonts load from Google Fonts. To load no external font, choose System or Georgia in Fonts.
Media you embed in articles (a YouTube video, for example) loads from its provider.
All requests use HTTPS. There are no secrets in the theme.

Performance

Porchlight's script loads after the page and reads Zendesk's help center API for two things only: the topic list in the topics bar and the phone menu, and quick search results as the shopper types. The topic list is kept for the visit, so moving between pages doesn't ask again.
Nothing moves while the page loads: the topics bar, the announcement and the Open now line keep their space before they are filled in.
The home picture loads first, and only one picture: no sliders, no video.

Browsers and devices

Porchlight is built and tested in Chrome (and so other Chromium browsers such as Edge), Firefox and Safari, on desktop, tablet and phone sizes, in light and dark mode, in English, Arabic, Hebrew and Japanese.

The home page on a phone — On a phone: home, an article, and a topic page in dark mode.

An article on a phone — On a phone: home, an article, and a topic page in dark mode.

Older iPhones and iPads (Safari before 16.2) get the same layout with slightly simpler color blends. Very old browsers that Zendesk itself no longer supports may show plainer hover effects.

Accessibility

Keyboard navigation everywhere with visible focus, a skip link, menus that close with Escape and return focus, dialogs that keep focus inside, accessible names on icon buttons, text contrast that meets WCAG AA in both color modes for the default colors, and body text in Atkinson Hyperlegible Next, a font designed for low-vision readers. Nothing on the page moves on its own; the image zoom and short confirmations fade in, and not at all for visitors who ask their device to reduce motion.